Radar-Centric ISAC Through Index Modulation: Over-the-air Experimentation and Trade-offs

Abstract

This study experimentally demonstrates a radarcentric integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system that exploits the radar transmission parameters as modulation indexes to communicate with the user devices while performing short-range radar sensing. The center frequency, bandwidth, and polarization of the transmitted radar chirps are used as modulation indexes. The simulation results have been verified by real-time over-the-air experimental measurements that have also revealed the trade-off between the radar sensing performance and communication data rate, depending on the radar waveform parameters selected in the ISAC system. The proposed dualfunction radar and communication system was shown to reach up to 10 Megabits/s throughput depending on the bandwidth and centre frequency separations and chirp duration.