SDR-Empowered Environment Sensing Design and Experimental Validation Using OTFS-ISAC Signals

This paper investigates the system design and experimental validation of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) for environmental sensing, which is expected to be a critical enabler for next-generation wireless networks. We advocate exploiting orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation for its inherent sparsity and stability in delay-Doppler (DD) domain channels, facilitating a low-overhead environment sensing design. Moreover, a comprehensive environmental sensing framework is developed, encompassing DD domain channel estimation, target localization, and experimental validation. In particular, we first explore the OTFS channel estimation in the presence of fractional delay and Doppler shifts. Given the estimated parameters, we propose a three-ellipse positioning algorithm to localize the target's position, followed by determining the mobile transmitter's velocity. Additionally, to evaluate the performance of our proposed design, we conduct extensive simulations and experiments using a software-defined radio (SDR)-based platform with universal software radio peripheral (USRP). The experimental validations demonstrate that our proposed approach outperforms the benchmarks in terms of localization accuracy and velocity estimation, confirming its effectiveness in practical environmental sensing applications.

Channel Spreading Function-Inspired Channel Transfer Function Estimation for OFDM Systems with High-Mobility

In this letter, we propose a novel channel transfer function (CTF) estimation approach for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in high-mobility scenarios, that leverages the stationary properties of the delay-Doppler domain channel spreading function (CSF). First, we develop a CSF estimation model for OFDM systems that relies solely on discrete pilot symbols in the time-frequency (TF) domain, positioned at predefined resource elements. We then present theorems to elucidate the relationship between CSF compactness and pilot spacing in the TF domain for accurate CSF acquisition. Based on the estimated CSF, we finally estimate the CTF for data symbols. Numerical results show that, in high-mobility scenarios, the proposed approach outperforms traditional interpolation-based methods and closely matches the optimal estimator in terms of estimation accuracy. This work may pave the way for CSF estimation in commercial OFDM systems, benefiting high-mobility communications, integrated sensing and communications, and related applications.