Fundamental Trade-Offs in Monostatic ISAC: A Holistic Investigation Towards 6G

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) emerges as a cornerstone technology for the upcoming 6G era, seamlessly incorporating sensing functionality into wireless networks as an inherent capability. This paper undertakes a holistic investigation of two fundamental trade-offs in monostatic OFDM ISAC systems-namely, the time-frequency domain trade-off and the spatial domain trade-off. To ensure robust sensing across diverse modulation orders in the time-frequency domain, including high-order QAM, we design a linear minimum mean-squared-error (LMMSE) estimator tailored for sensing with known, randomly generated signals of varying amplitude. Moreover, we explore spatial domain trade-offs through two ISAC transmission strategies: concurrent, employing joint beams, and time-sharing, using separate, time-non-overlapping beams for sensing and communications. Simulations demonstrate superior performance of the LMMSE estimator in detecting weak targets in the presence of strong ones under high-order QAM, consistently yielding more favorable ISAC trade-offs than existing baselines. Key insights into these trade-offs under various modulation schemes, SNR conditions, target radar cross section (RCS) levels and transmission strategies highlight the merits of the proposed LMMSE approach.