Joint radar and communications with multicarrier chirp-based waveform

We consider a multicarrier chirp-based waveform for joint radar and communication (JRC) systems and derive its time discrete periodic ambiguity function (AF). An advantage of the waveform is that it includes a set of waveform parameters (e.g., chirp rate) which together with the transmit sequence, can be selected to flexibly shape the AF to be thumbtack-like, or to be ridge-like, either along the delay axis or the Doppler axis. These shapes are applicable for different use cases, e.g., target detection or time- and frequency synchronization. The results show that better signal detection performance than OFDM and DFT-s-OFDM can be achieved on channels with large Doppler frequency. Furthermore, it is shown how transmit sequences can be selected in order to achieve 0 dB peak-to-average-power-ratio (PAPR) of the waveform.