Statistically efficient simultaneous amplitude measurement of multiple linear chirp signals

In this article, the amplitude measurement of multiple and simultaneously received linear chirp signals is investigated. The achievable scalability, that is, the maximum number of simultaneously transmitted superimposed signals that a receiver can characterize with a given target accuracy, is explored using simulations. The effect of chirp duration and bandwidth on the estimation accuracy and on the scalability is investigated. The effect of inaccuracies affecting the realized chirp duration and bandwidth is also discussed. It is shown that the scalability of the proposed approach is competitive with respect to multiple access methods, such as frequency-division multiple access or code-division multiple access. It is also shown that accurate amplitude measurements are achievable even when the collected signal is the superimposition of up to 20 chirp signals with amplitudes differing by three orders of magnitude.