An RFSoC-Based Scalable OTFS Prototyping Platform for Integrated Sensing and Communications

Yucong Wang, Ming Ouyang, Tengyu Zhang, Feifei Gao

Abstract: In this paper, we design a radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC) based scalable orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) prototyping platform for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). We conceive an efficient frame structure tailored to streamline the low complexity frame synchronization, channel estimation, and channel equalization in the time-delay domain. The prototype can sense the range-velocity parameters of the targets in a straightforward manner through the synchronization preamble and the peak pilot in the frame structure. The RFSoC platform employs a hybrid architecture, which combines the RFSoC with an upper computer to process the intermediate frequency and baseband signals. The hybrid architectural approach can be scaled to accommodate diverse OTFS waveform configurations, facilitating the verification of a wide range of OTFS algorithms. We test the communications and sensing performance of the prototyping platform in both static and dynamic environments. The experimental results demonstrate that the prototype can achieve sensing capabilities with a velocity resolution of $1.65~m/s$ and a range resolution of $0.5~m$ while ensuring complete and accurate demodulation of communications data. In addition, we analyze the limiting performance of the prototyping platform, which shows that: when the transmit power is about 30 dBm: 1) the farthest range that the prototype can communicate properly is larger than $90~m$ under the condition of 16-QAM modulation mode and with no error bits; 2) the farthest sensing range is larger than $60~m$ .

External IDs:dblp:journals/twc/WangOZG25