Performance Tradeoff in a Unified Passive Radar and Communications System

Although radar and communication systems so far have been considered separately, recent advances in passive radar systems have motivated us to propose a unified system, capable of fulfilling the requirements of both radar and communications. In this paper, we provide performance tradeoff analysis for a system consisting of a transmitter, a passive radar receiver, and a communication receiver (CR). The total power is allocated for transmitting the radar waveforms and information signals in such a way that the probability of detection (PD) is maximized, while satisfying the information rate requirement of the CR. An exact closed-form expression for the probability of false alarm (PFA) is derived, whereas PD is approximated by assuming that the signal-to-noise ratio corresponding to the reference channel is often much larger than that corresponding to the surveillance channel. The performance tradeoff between the radar and communication subsystems is then characterized by the boundaries of the PFA-rate and PD-rate regions.