Waveform Design Aspects for 6G-Integrated Communication and Sensing

The design of integrated communication and sensing systems is a certain challenge, because so far 4G and 5G waveforms and protocols have been optimized for communication purposes and not sensing. Special positioning reference symbols are part of the standard in order to locate users, but if it is intended to used the radiated signals directly for bistatic radar operation, it is critical to achieve the optimum sensing performance. On the one hand resources over the time frequency grid must be allocated over the necessary coherent integration time and bandwidth, on the other hand waveforms for spatial diversity and multiplexing require a significantly more complex signal processing for target detection. With the developed approach severe performance degradation can be avoided and losses can be reduced to tolerable levels for the signal-to-noise ratios of targets.