Joint Sensing and Communication over Memoryless Broadcast Channels

Abstract: A memoryless state-dependent broadcast channel (BC) is considered, where the transmitter wishes to convey two private messages to two receivers while simultaneously estimating the respective states via generalized feedback. The model at hand is motivated by a joint radar and communication system where radar and data applications share the same frequency band. For physically degraded BCs with i.i.d. state sequences, we characterize the capacity-distortion tradeoff region. For general BCs, we provide inner and outer bounds on the capacitydistortion region, as well as a sufficient condition when it is equal to the product of the capacity region and the set of achievable distortion. Interestingly, the proposed synergetic design significantly outperforms a conventional approach that splits the resource either for sensing or communication.