UFMC Waveform and Multiple-Access Techniques for 5G RadCom

In recent years, multiple functions traditionally realized by hardware components have been replaced by digital-signal processing, making radar and wireless communication technologies more similar. A joint radar and communication system, referred to as a RadCom system, was proposed to overcome the drawbacks of the conventional existent radar techniques while using the same system for intervehicular communication. Consequently, this system enhances used spectral resources. Conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) was proposed as a RadCom waveform. However, due to OFDM’s multiple shortcomings, we propose universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC), a new 5G waveform candidate, as a RadCom waveform that offers a good trade-off between performance and complexity. In addition to that, we propose multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) as a multiple-access (MA) technique that can offer great performance in terms of multiuser detection and power efficiency. Moreover, we study how UFMC filter length and MC-CDMA spreading sequences can impact overall performance on both radar and communication separately under a multipath channel. Analysis of the bit error rate (BER) of the UFMC waveform was performed in order to confirm the experiment results.