Multi-User Detection for Radar and Communication Multifunction System

Abstract

A multifunctional system that performs synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and communication tasks is presented. The system depends on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveform shaping and multiple input multiple output (MIMO) configuration to achieve enhancement in the spectral efficiency of communication operation and provide interference rejection in SAR imaging. The SAR interval idle time is utilized to enhance the communication signal through diversity. Adaptive system features are introduced to achieve multi-user detection and improve the communication reliability, by means of space division multiple access (SDMA) and space–time block coding (STBC). Investigations of linear and nonlinear multi-user detection (MUD) techniques are provided. Moreover, a genetic algorithm-based system is developed to optimize the MUD problem and to provide near-optimal performance even for overloaded scenarios. A gain of more than 4 dB is achieved at bit error rate of 10-2.