FPGA Acceleration and Over-the-Air Validation of IEEE 802.11ad Based Integrated Sensing and Communication using RFSoC and Millimeter Wave Front-Ends

We present the design, implementation, and experimental validation of a millimeter-wave (mmWave) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) hardware testbed. Our contribution includes the algorithms to architecture mapping of modified IEEE 802.11ad ISAC waveform on AMD-Xilinx radio frequency system-on-chip (RFSoC) via hardware software co-design (HSCD) with 1.5x acceleration in processing time. The digital front end is integrated with the mmWave analog front-end (AFE) from Sivers Semiconductor for over-the-air experiments in real radio environments. We demonstrate radar sensing of mobile users (MU) along range and azimuth, followed by directional wireless communication between the base station (BS) and MU, without the need for time-consuming uplink and downlink overhead for beam alignment. The ISAC radar transceiver achieves a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.11 m in range and 2.7◦ in angle, while the communication system achieves a median bit error rate (BER) below 10-2 with 0.31 GSPS of throughput.