Computationally efficient beampattern synthesis for dual-function radar-communications

The essence of amplitude-modulation based dual-function radar-communications is to modulate the sidelobe of the transmit beampattern while keeping the main beam, where the radar function takes place, unchanged during the entire processing interval. The number of distinct sidelobe levels (SLL) required for information embedding grows exponentially with the number of bits being embedded. We propose a simple and computationally cheap method for transmit beampattern synthesis which requires designing and storing only two beamforming weight vectors. The proposed method first designs a principal transmit beamforming weight vector based on the requirements dictated by the radar function of the DFRC system. Then, a second weight vectors is obtained by enforcing a deep null towards the intended communication directions. Additional SLLs can be realized by simply taking weighted linear combinations of the two available weight vectors. The effectiveness of the proposed method for beampattern synthesis is verified using simulations examples.