Receiver Design for Multiple Users/Targets in ISAC

Systems
Sugata Bhunia Ass.Prof. Suganthi J Prof. Sanjeev Gurugopinath
Electronics and Communication Electronics and Communication Electronics and Communication
Engineering (Communication) Engineering (Communication) Engineering (Communication)
PES University PES University PES University
(of Affiliation) (of Affiliation) (of Affiliation)
Bengaluru, India Bengaluru, India Bengaluru, India
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—This paper presents an advanced receiver design for beamforming and waveform design. Nevertheless, there is
Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) systems very limited literature that deals with receive signal
accommodating multiple users and multiple sensing targets. processing for ISAC systems.
The suggested system makes use of MIMO (Multiple Input
Multiple Output) technology to raise performance benchmarks Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) systems
and boost spatial diversity. The system provides strong have surfaced as a potentially viable response to the growing
interference management and signal separation by needs of next-generation wireless networks in terms of
simultaneously processing radar echoes from numerous targets improved features and effective spectrum utilization. In the
and communication signals from multiple users. Increased past, ISAC research has concentrated on situations with a
communication power (𝛽) and receiver antennas (NRx) result single user and a single sensing target to show the viability
in notable improvements in Bit Error Rate (BER) and Mean and advantages of integrating radar sensing and
Squared Error (MSE), according to numerical simulations. communication capabilities into a single system. However,
However, the study also draws attention to several difficulties, real-world applications like industrial automation, smart
including heightened multi-user interference and saturation cities, and vehicle networks require simultaneous support for
effects at high power levels. The findings highlight the need for multiple users and multiple objectives.
sophisticated algorithms and flexible methods to preserve
accurate sensing and dependable communication. This In receive signal processing, the need to complete S&C
research contributes to developing scalable, high-performance operations simultaneously presents unique challenges.
ISAC systems suitable for complex real-world applications, Generally speaking, an ISAC receiver ought to be able to
such as smart cities and vehicular networks. identify and estimate targets from the echoes while also
decoding meaningful information from the communication
Keywords— Integrated sensing and communications, signal. Since both S&C are free from interference, standard
maximum likelihood, interference cancellation, minimum mean signal processing can be conducted indefinitely if the two
squared error.
signals do not overlap. The trade-off for obtaining the
I. INTRODUCTION integration gain is mutual interference, which happens if the
two signals fully or substantially overlap in the temporal and
The research communities' attention has switched to defining frequency domains.
the essential characteristics of the sixth generation (6G) and
finding the enabling technologies as a result of the In order to support multiple users and multiple targets, this
widespread deployment of commercial fifth generation (5G) study expands on the existing ISAC receiver architecture. It
mobile systems. In contrast to earlier generations, 6G will does this by utilizing MIMO (numerous Input different
permeate every industry and turn into a ubiquitous Output) technology to take advantage of spatial diversity and
infrastructure, leading to a vast deployment of end-user enhance overall system performance. The proposed system
devices and networks. It follows that an increase in linked intends to improve the resilience and efficiency of ISAC
mobile devices from 8 billion to 11.6 billion is expected. operations by simultaneously processing radar echoes from
numerous targets and communication signals from many
Radio sensing and communication (S&C) systems are both users.
evolving towards higher frequency bands, larger antenna
arrays, and miniaturization, thereby becoming increasingly Through numerical simulations, we give a thorough
similar in terms of hardware architectures, channel examination of the system's performance, showing how
characteristics, and signal processing. This offers an exciting increasing communication power (𝛽) and the number of
opportunity to implement sensing using wireless reception antennas (NRx) enhance Bit Error Rate (BER) and
infrastructures, enabling future networks to provide Mean Squared Error (MSE).
ubiquitous sensing services to measure or even image
The results show notable improvements over cases with a
surrounding environments.
single user and target, indicating the system's capacity to
In the future smart world, this sensing feature and the handle intricate interactions and interference. This paper also
network's related capacity to gather sensory input from the discusses the difficulties caused by saturation effects and
surroundings are considered as facilitators for learning and multi-user interference at high power levels, highlighting the
intelligence construction. They may be widely employed in a necessity of sophisticated algorithms and adaptive methods
variety of location/environment aware situations. to preserve accurate sensing and dependable communication.
Most of the existing ISAC signal processing approaches By addressing the needs of contemporary wireless
focus on the designs at the transmitter side, namely, ISAC applications, this research helps to construct scalable, high-

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

performance ISAC systems, which opens the door for more Since the targets are assumed to be within a single range gate
advanced and useful deployments in diverse environments. for the sake of conciseness, the targets' parameters are
calculated with a predetermined delay.
As the BS performs communication and sensing tasks at the
II. SYSTEM MODEL same time with perfect time synchronization , it can lead for
both (1) and (2) to be received simultaneously to the mixture
of the S&C signals as:
y ( n )= y c ( n ) + y s ( n )
i j

H
¿ hC s i ( n )+ α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z ( n ),
i
(3)

where z ( n )=z 1i ( n )+ z 2 j ( n ) , a zero mean white Gaussian

noise vector having a variance of σ 2.

Our goal in the communication problem is to use our

knowledge of hc to recover the symbol s(n) from the mixed
reception y(n). In the sensing challenge, our main objective
is to estimate the target's reflection coefficient α(n) using the
knowledge of the probing signal x(n).We concentrate on
estimating the reflection coefficient, assuming that the
target's angle is precisely tracked or expected, in which case
f = a(θ). Assuming the target's reflection coefficient to vary
with each pulse's Rayleigh/Exponential distributed
amplitude, as per the Swerling II target model, α(n) will
follow the complex Gaussian distribution in an i.i.d. fashion.
Fig 1. The ISAC scenarios considered Normalization to the variance of α by the noise power σ 2is
taken as α ( n ) C N ( 0 ,1 ) .
We take into consideration a MIMO ISAC BS equipped with
Nt transmit antennas and Nr receive antennas with multiple
users and multiple targets by incorporating multiple
III. ISAC RECEIVER DESIGN
communication and sensing interactions as shown in Fig 1.
Let s(t) be the uplink communication signals transmitted by Two design strategies are proposed for ISAC receive signal
th sample ,n=1,2,..,N. For each user 𝑖(𝑖 = 1 , 2 , … , 𝑈) the
different users and received by the BS and s(n)∈C be the n- processing, IC approach and the Non IC approach.
communication signal received at the ISAC BS is modeled
as: A. IC Approach : Suboptimal Design
y c ( n )=hC s i ( n )+ z1 ( n ) ,
i i i
(1)
For multiple users(U) and multiple targets(T), the
where y c i ( n ) is the received communication signal for user received signal at the ISAC BS can be formulated as:
𝑖. hC i is the communication channel gain for user 𝑖 . si ( n ) is U T

the transmitted communication signal from user 𝑖. z 1i ( n ) is y ( n )=∑ hC si ( n ) + ∑ α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z ( n )

i
i=1 j=1

of user 𝑖.
the additive white Gaussian noise for the communication link
(4)

Let x(t) be the radar signals transmitted by the BS and x(n) Upon observing that the vector z(n) and random variable

beamforming vector. For each target 𝑗 (𝑗 = 1 , 2 , … , 𝑇),

∈C be the n-th sample, and f ∈ CNt×1 be the transmit α are both independent of one another and have a white
the radar echo received at the ISAC BS is modeled as: Gaussian distribution having zero-mean and a covariance
H matrix given, assuming that the reflection coefficients
y s ( n )=α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z 2 ( n ) , (2)

where y s j ( n ) is the received radar echo from target 𝑗. α j ( n )

j j
and noise are Gaussian distributed, we can write the

is the reflection coefficient of target 𝑗. b ( θ j ) is the steering

combined noise and interference term as:

vector of the receive antenna array for target 𝑗. a ( θ j) is the

T
z c ( n )=∑ α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z ( n ),
H

steering vector of the transmit antenna array for target 𝑗. 𝑓

(5)

is the beamforming vector. 𝑥(𝑛) is the transmitted radar

j=1

signal. z 2 j ( n ) is the additive white Gaussian noise for the

sensing channel of target 𝑗.
So the Covariance matrix is given by:
 T performance. It happens after estimating and canceling
Rc =∑ g j g j H + σ 2I, (6)
j=1
the communication signals, which affects the subsequent
H steps of the signal processing.
where g j=b ( θ j ) a (θ j ) f .
With the covariance matrix, whitening of the received
B. Non-IC Design: Optimal Approach
−1
2
signals is done with the whitening matrix Q=R c as:
The IC approach brings residual error Δ y s, affecting the
U
accuracy of the subsequent estimation of sensing
Qy ( n )=Q ∑ hC si ( n ) +Q z c ( n ),
i (7) parameters due to primarily three main reasons, first is
i=1
the interference, where Δ y sitself acts as an additional
U
Qy ( n )=Q ∑ hC si ( n ) + z n ( n ) , (8)
interference, degrading the overall quality of the system.
i=1
i Second is the bias leading to wrong estimates, and third
is enhancement in noise where the Δ y s expand the
where z n ( n ) C N ( 0 , I ) noise floor, lowering the SNR of the sensing task.
Next we need to maximize the SNR, so we employ a On applying the MMSE estimator to the interference
cancelled sign, assumption is taken that the residual error
maximum receive combiner at the receiver. The
is negligible. But if the Δ y s is significant, estimation of
combiner W is given by W =Q hC i reflection coefficients becomes suboptimal.
Each symbol in the communication constellation is
The combined signal is: assumed to occur equiprobably, hence its uniformly
~ H H H
y c ( n )=W Qy ( n ) =W Q hC s i ( n )+W z n ( n ), distributed p( si ¿=1 /¿ A∨¿. Thus, the mixed
(9)
i
reception y(n) can be processed directly without any
prior interference cancellation.
For minimizing the decoding error, Maximum The MMSE estimator, using Bayesian estimation theory
H can be derived for the reflection coefficients and the
likelihood(ML) detector is used. W z n ( n ) again follows
estimator for α is the mean of its posterior density
gaussian distribution, so it can be treated as AWGN function given as:

^si ( n )=mins ¿ ~
y c ( n ) −W H Q hC si ( n ) ∨¿2 ¿,
i i α^ MMSE =E ( α| y )=∫ αp ( α| y ) dα ,
(10)
(15)
U
^s ( n )=mins ∑ ¿ ~
y c ( n )−W H Q hC s i ( n )∨¿ 2 ¿,
i We use joint probability distribution and then integrate
i=1
over α as:
(11)
With ^s ( n ) in hand , the estimated communication signals 1
are subtracted from the mixed reception signal:
α^ MMSE = ∑ ∫ αp ( y , α|s i ) p ( s i ) dα ,
p( y) s ϵ A
i

U (16)
y IC= y ( n )−∑ hC s^i ( n ) , (12) As si is uniformly distributed and y and α are jointly
i
i=1

Now we estimate the reflection coefficient α (n),for each Gaussian, we have:

target : 1
α^ MMSE = ∑ ∫ αp ( y , α|s i ) dα ,
T
y IC ( n )=∑ α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z (n)+ Δ y s
∑ p ( y∨si ) s ϵ A
i
si ϵ A
j=1 (17)
(13)
Using MMSE estimator: For each communication symbol si , the joint distribution
H H
of y and α is Gaussian with conditional covariance
α^j ( n ) =(b ( θ j ) a ( θ j ) f ) ∗¿ matrix as :

( )
H 2
g g +σ I g
T C y ,α ∨s = H ,
−1 i
g 1
( ∑ b ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) fb ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) f + σ 2 I ) y IC ( n ) ,
j=1
(18)
(14)
where g= b ( θ ) a H ( θ ) f .
^j ( n ) is applied in ISAC receiver,
Even if the Estimator α
It omits residual error and hence leads to suboptimal The PDF of the joint distribution is given by:
 Nr
γ s =∑ ¿ h(Ck )∨¿2 ¿,
i i (23)
H

( )C ( )
k=1
1 −1 y−h C si y−h C s i )
p ( y , α|si ) = exp ⁡( i
−1
( k)
i

α hC is the channel gain for k-th receive antenna and

y , α∨si
2 N+1
(2 π σ ) 2 α Where i

(19) user i.

The conditional PDF p(y| si ), with received signal y is: B. Reflection Coefficient Estimation

1 −1
p ( y|si )=
H −1
2 N
exp (
2
( y−hC si ) R c ( y−hC s i ) ) The MSE between the MMSE estimator and the real
(2 π σ ) parameter can be translated to the expectation of the
i i

conditional variance according to Bayesian estimation

(20)
theory.
For multiple targets, the MSE for the estimated reflection
coefficient α j is:
By substituting the PDFs into MMSE estimator we get:
MSE ( α^ MMSE , j )=∬|α j− α^ MMSE , j| p ( α j , y ) d α j dy
2

( ( y −hC si ) ) exp ⁡¿ ¿ ¿
−1
α^ MMSE =∑ g ( g g + σ I )
H H 2
i
(24)
si ϵ A
(21) ^ MMSE , j is
where α j is the reflection coefficient for target j, α
This estimator uses the structural information of the the MMSE estimate of α j , and p ( α j , y ) is the joint
communication constellation and is optimal in
probability density function of α j and y.
minimizing the MSE for the reflection coefficient α .
V. SIMULATION AND NUMERICAL RESULTS
By combining both the ML detector (11) and MMSE
estimator (21), we can ensure both communication and
To verify and validate the effectiveness of the proposed
sensing tasks are optimized together, giving the full ISAC receiver design ,we provide numerical results.The
statistical properties of the received signal. following system model is used to illustrate the mutual
interference between sensing and communication
IV. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS functionalities.
In multiple users/targets scenario, the model needs to handle
Performance is done for several critical reasons out of multiple communication signals from different users and
which validation of the proposed theoretical models to ensure multiple reflections according to the reflection coefficients as
that the practical implementation aligns with theoretical to how much the incident radar signal is reflected by the
predictions is the most important aspect. target.The model can be closely generalized as:

Metrics like Bit Error Rate(BER) and Mean Squared

U T
Error(MSE) are used to measure the reliability and
effectiveness of communication and sensing tasks. y ( n )=∑ √ β i hC si ( n ) + ∑ √ γ j α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a H ( θ j ) fx ( n ) + z (n)
i
i=1 j=1
, (25)
A. Communication Signal Detection
where β i and γ j are the communication signal power from
Focus on communication signal is given here to analyze
user i and sensing signal power for target j, respectively, and
the BER performance. On jointly processing the
both hC i s i ( n )and α j ( n ) b ( θ j ) a ( θ j ) fx ( n ) are normalized.
H
communication signals from multiple users, the BER can be
formulated for each user i considering the interference from
other users and additional unwanted noise. Simulation is done in MATLAB with several key parameters
to verify the functionality of ISAC system. We consider an
The BER for QPSK modulation with coherent demodulation ISAC BS equipped with Nt = 4 and Nr = 1,2,4 antennas
for user i is expressed as: which are equally spaced linear arrays with half wavelength
space, for better analyzing the impact of spatial diversity on
BER QPSK =Q ( √ γ s ) =Q ¿, i
(22) the performance metrics, such as Bit Error Rate and Mean
Squared Error.
where γ si is the total SNR after combining for user i, w i is
The number of users and targets are taken as 2 representing a
the combining vector for user i through MRC, and Q(.) is the
multi-user target scenario. The two sensing targets are
Q-function, representing the tail probability of standard
normal distribution. positioned at angles [30°,60°], with noise power is set to σ 2
= -30 dB, to focus the analysis on the mutual interference
After combining the total SNR is the sum of all the SNRs at between communication and sensing signals rather than the
all the subchannels because of the employed MRC combiner. noise, helping to isolate the effects of designed algorithms on
the system’s performance.
The total data set is taken as 10,000 to ensure statistically
significant results through a thorough analysis of the BER
and MSE across various configurations and power levels.
Communication power has been ranged from ¿ ¿] to study
the system’s performance under SNR conditions, while the
sensing power is fixed to 1 focusing the impact of varying
communication power on sensing performance, simplifying
the analysis while providing insights into the interaction
between both.
The beam steering vectors for transmit and receive antennas
are evaluated by the target angles along with the covariance
matrix from the sensing channels and the additional noise ,
with having Maximum Likelihood Detection points ensuring
accurate symbol detection.
In Fig 2, the BER vs Communication Signal power exhibits
several notable features. As the communication power
increases, the SNR improves leading to reduction in BER.

Increasing the number of receive antennas from 1 to 4 not (b) Sensing performance
only provides better spatial diversity but also improves the Fig 2: Communication and sensing performance with
ability to separate signals out from different users and targets, different number of antennas having multiple users and
resulting in lower BER. The BER decreases initially with targets with fixed sensing power (γ =1) and varying
communication power (β ϵ [10−3 , 103 ]).
increasing the β, but then it stabilizes and does not show any
significant improvement at higher power levels. The curve
having 4 receive antennas reaches very low BER values,

The sensing performance have increased

implying robust performance. The user 2 performance is

complexity in multi-user and multi-target

worse than user 1 due to higher interference and less

environment. Again with increasing the antenna

favorable channel conditions.

configuration leverages the spatial diversity to

effectively handle increased interference. As the
β increases, the MSE initially remains low, but
then starts to increase beyond a certain point
indicating that the interference from strong
communication signals have a significant
negative impact on the sensing performance.
Target 1 with 4 receive antennas shows
significantly lower MSE than to configurations
with less antennas.
In low β region, the interference from
communication signals is minimal and the MSE
is majorly influenced by noise power. As β
increases, the interference becomes more
significant.
(a) Communication performance Similar pattern is observed in the performance
with different receive antennas for single
target, but as target increases the MSE values
becomes slightly higher than with 1 target
possibly due to the differences in channel
conditions and target positioning. Also the
curves for the configurations with more number
of antennas show a delayed and slower increase
trend in the MSE curve as β increases, hence
better performance.
 flexibility in multi user/target scenarios. Cognitive radio
techniques and contect-aware processing can also enable the
ISAC systems to adapt to environmental factors, to ensure
reliable and robust operation, superior performance and
resilence in complex, real-time scenarios.

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