Chirp Delay-Doppler Domain Modulation Based Joint Communication and Radar for Autonomous Vehicles

This paper introduces a sensing-centric joint communication and millimeter-wave radar paradigm to facilitate collaboration among intelligent vehicles. We first propose a chirp waveform-based delay-Doppler quadrature amplitude modulation (DD-QAM) that modulates data across delay, Doppler, and amplitude dimensions. Building upon this modulation scheme, we derive its achievable rate to quantify the communication performance. We then introduce an extended Kalman filter-based scheme for four-dimensional (4D) parameter estimation in dynamic environments, enabling the active vehicles to accurately estimate orientation and tangential-velocity beyond traditional 4D radar systems. Furthermore, in terms of communication, we propose a dual-compensation-based demodulation and tracking scheme that allows the passive vehicles to effectively demodulate data without compromising their sensing functions. Simulation results underscore the feasibility and superior performance of our proposed methods, marking a significant advancement in the field of autonomous vehicles. Simulation codes are provided to reproduce the results in this paper: \href{https://github.com/LiZhuoRan0/2026-IEEE-TWC-ChirpDelayDopplerModulationISAC}{https://github.com/LiZhuoRan0}.