Chaos Based Frequency Modulation for Joint Monostatic and Bistatic Radar-Communication Systems

In this article, we propose the utilization of chaos-based frequency modulated (CBFM) waveforms for joint monostatic and bistatic radar-communication systems. Short-duration pulses generated via chaotic oscillators are used for wideband radar imaging, while information is embedded in the pulses using chaos shift keying (CSK). A self-synchronization technique for chaotic systems decodes the information at the communication receiver and reconstructs the transmitted waveform at the bistatic radar receiver. Using a nonlinear detection scheme, we show that the CBFM waveforms closely follow the theoretical bit-error rate (BER) associated with bipolar phase-shift keying (BPSK). We utilize the same nonlinear detection scheme to optimize the target detection at the bistatic radar receiver. The ambiguity function for both the monostatic and bistatic cases resembles a thumbtack ambiguity function with a pseudo-random sidelobe distribution. Furthermore, we characterize the high-resolution imaging capability of the CBFM waveforms in the presence of noise and considering a complex target.