ECE Distinguished Professor Athina Petropulu received a new grant from the Army Research Office for a project entitled "Dual Function Radar Communication Systems for Efficient and Secure Spectrum Utilization". This is a 3-year project and was funded at $480K.
For a long time, the fields of wireless communication and radar sensing have been advancing independently of each other. With today's technology, radio frequency (RF) front-end architectures are basically the same in radar and wireless communication systems. Further, by constantly seeking access to more bandwidth, wireless systems have been shifting to high frequency bands, which have been traditionally occupied by radar systems. Recently there has been a lot of interest in capitalizing on the hardware and frequency convergence to design integrated sensing and communication systems (ISC), i.e., systems that can perform sensing and communication out of a single hardware platform. Dual Function Radar-Communication (DFRC) systems are ISC systems that use the same waveform as well as the same hardware platform for both sensing and communication, thus providing high spectral efficiency in addition to hardware and power savings. However, several challenges need to be overcome before the full potential of DFRC systems can be realized. Firstly, DFRC systems must be able to efficiently use available bandwidth for both functions, as opposed to current DFRC solutions that are typically communication-focused or sensing-focused. Secondly, compensating for the high attenuation experienced by high frequencies, and also achieving high localization accuracy, requires large arrays that are expensive and consume a lot of power. Thirdly, as communication information is embedded in the probing waveform, DFRC systems are vulnerable to eavesdropping by potential targets.
The proposed project will advance the state-of-the-art of DFRC systems by developing bandwidth efficient systems that can flexibly trade-off bandwidth for communication performance. Novel hybrid analog-digital architectures will be developed for achieving good performance with reduced hardware and energy cost. Novel physical layer security methods for system design will be developed that can address mobile user scenarios and intelligent eavesdroppers. The systems to be developed will have profound impact on applications such as autonomous driving vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, surveillance, search and rescue, and networked robots in advanced manufacturing applications that rely on communications and sensing.
Congratulations to Athina!