Synchronization-Free RadChat for Automotive Radar Interference Mitigation

Automotive radar interference mitigation is expected to be inherent in all future ADAS and AD vehicles. Joint radar communications is a candidate technology for removing this interference by coordinating radar sensing through communication. Coordination of radars requires strict time synchronization among vehicles, and our formerly proposed protocol (RadChat) achieves this by a precise absolute time, provided by GPS clocks of vehicles. However, interference might appear if synchronization among vehicles is lost in case GPS is spoofed, satellites are blocked over short intervals, or GPS is restarted/updated. Here we present a synchronization-free version of RadChat (Sync-free RadChat), which relies on using the relative time for radar coordination, eliminating the dependency on the absolute time provided by GPS. Simulation results obtained for various use cases show that Sync-free RadChat is able to mitigate interference without degrading the radar performance.