Clutter-Aware Precoder Design for Integrated Sensing and Communication Systems

It is envisaged that next-generation wireless networks will provide integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) functions. Clutter is one of the major factors that degrade the performance of sensing, whereas inter-user interference degrades communication capacity. Thus, this study proposes two clutter-aware precoder designs for ISAC systems that maximize the sensing accuracy and communication sum rate by minimizing the clutter and inter-user interference. The first precoder aims to maximize the network’s sum rate while maintaining a desired signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR) for sensing. On the other hand, the second precoder proposed endeavors to maximize the SCNR while ensuring a desired data rate for each communication user equipment (UE). Both precoders need to deal with non-convex optimization problems, which are solved via sequential quadratic programming and block coordinate descent in this study. The performance of the proposed precoding schemes is verified via extensive simulations and compared to linear and optimization-based communication-only benchmarking precoders.