Co-channel interference limitations of OFDM communication-radar networks

Abstract

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) communication-radar networks are systems where individual nodes use OFDM signals to both communicate and perform radar simultaneously. As a research subject, such networks are fairly new and lack some research covering fundamental limits. In particular, it is unclear how the reliability of the radar component is affected by a network operation, as several nodes might attempt to access the medium at the same time, thereby increasing interference and reducing the radar capabilities of individual nodes. In this paper, we apply the notion of outage (which was originally introduced for communication networks) to radar networks and introduce the outage probability as a performance metric. Using stochastic geometry, we are able to give tight bounds on the outage probability and demonstrate how this is useful for testing OFDM radar parametrizations and algorithms. It is possible to show that the outage probability is smaller than 1% for previously suggested OFDM radar parametrizations without having to resort to empirical methods. © 2013 Liao et al.; licensee Springer.