Neighbor Discovery and MAC Protocol for Joint Automotive Radar-Communication Systems

Large-scale deployment of connected vehicles equipped with multiple automotive radar systems increases the demand on both the millimeter-wave (mmWave) automotive radar spectrum in 76-81 GHz and the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication spectrum in 5.9 GHz that is mainly allocated for the exchange of safety messages. To supplement V2X communication and support high data rates needed by broadband applications, the automotive radar spectrum with up to 4 GHz of contiguous band-width can be leveraged. For this purpose, various joint automotive radar-communication (JARC) systems have been proposed in the literature to perform both functions using the same radio-frequency (RF) signal and transceiver hardware. Combined with the high mobility in traffic, the directionality of RF transmission in mmWave spectrum and interference from other systems prevent JARC systems to achieve optimal communication and radar performance. In this work, we propose a dedicated neighbor discovery and medium access control (MAC) protocol for JARC systems to establish reliable communication links and improve the robustness of radar functionalities without requiring a separate control channel.