A Novel Deployable DFRC Framework Alleviating the Synchronization Bias of FMCW Radars

Although chirp-based frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) modulation is popular in automotive radars, it presents a crucial challenge for the deployment of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication because the impact of synchronization bias between radars on signal processing is not considered. A novel deployable frame-synchronized hybrid time division multiplexing (TDM) dual-function radar and communication (DFRC) framework named FSHT-DFRC is proposed in this letter to tackle this issue by taking both the frame and chirp of FMCW radar into account. In the design of frame, a new synchronized hybrid TDM transmit waveform design is proposed to embed the communication sequences into the FMCW waveform through binary phase-shift keying (BPSK). In the design of chirp, an innovative communication signal processing scheme utilizing the global phase information, which merges the fast- and slow-time, for decoding is developed to alleviate the synchronization bias between chirps elicited by radar hardware differences. The results of simulations and real-world experiment validate the effectiveness and superiority of proposed framework.