Hardware-Software Platform Enabling Joint Communication and Radar Sensing at 25 GHz with 1 GHz Bandwidth

Joint Communication and Radar Sensing (JCAS) is predicted to be one of the compelling features of future 6G systems. This paper presents a hardware-software evaluation platform designed to analyze JCAS performance in scenarios where a multi-purpose receiver front-end, antenna, and waveform are utilized to support both communication and sensing functionalities. The measurements are conducted in the 5G NR n258 band with 1GHz bandwidth. The front-end is tunable in gain, linearity, and frequency and is supported by a wideband high-isolation co-located aperture coupled antenna. The RX front-end has a peak gain of 29.9dB and achieves a maximum iP1dB of −17.5dBm for a gain of 16.8dB. The antennas provide an isolation of more than 40 dB across the operating band. The software platform supports several types of waveforms and modulation standards enabling a comprehensive performance evaluation. The paper also presents the radar measurements in a multi-target scenario along with communication measurements.