GNU Radio realization of Waveform Co-design for Joint Radar-Communications system using SDRs

Abstract

Combining Software Defined Radios (SDRs) with the GNU Radio software development toolkit can enable rapid prototyping of integrated sensing and communications (ISACs) systems. In this paper, we conduct a Hardware-In-TheLoop (HWIL) Over-The-Air (OTA) experiment on a low-cost SDR platform testbed to demonstrate the feasibility of cooperative waveform design for a joint radar-communications system. We implement the system using USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) B210s with GNU Radio acting as command software for the SDRs. A joint radar-communications node acts as a mono-static radar trying to detect a target in the environment, while also acting as a communications relay. A separate SDR transmits a complete BPSK or QPSK modulated signal that is implemented completely in GNU Radio. The joint radar-communications SDRs, equipped with high gain horn antennas, simultaneously performs radar processing to detect an emulated target in the environment and decoding of a communications message. Different modulation schemes for the communications transmitter, such as BPSK and QPSK are also implemented to verify the soundness of the joint radarcommunications system.