Integrated Sensing and Communication with Delay Alignment Modulation: Performance Analysis and Beamforming Optimization

Abstract: Delay alignment modulation (DAM) has been recently proposed to enable manipulable channel delay spread for efficient single- or multi-carrier communications. In particular, with perfect delay alignment, inter-symbol interference (ISI) can be eliminated even with single-carrier (SC) transmission, without relying on sophisticated channel equalization. The key ideas of DAM are delay pre-compensation and path-based beamforming, so that all multi-path signal components may arrive at the receiver simultaneously and be superimposed constructively, rather than causing the detrimental ISI. Compared to the classic orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission, DAM-enabled SC communication has several appealing advantages, including low peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) and high tolerance for Doppler frequency shift, which renders DAM also appealing for radar sensing. Therefore, in this paper, DAM is investigated for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. We first study the output signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) for ISI-free SC communication and radar sensing, and then derive the closed-form expressions for DAM-based sensing in terms of the ambiguity function (AF) and integrated sidelobe ratio (ISR). Furthermore, we study the beamforming design problem for DAM-based ISAC to maximize the communication SNR while guaranteeing the sensing performance in terms of the sensing SNR and ISR. Finally, we provide performance comparison between DAM and OFDM for ISAC, and it is revealed that DAM signal may achieve better communication and sensing performance, thanks to its low PAPR, reduced guard interval overhead, as well as higher tolerance for Doppler frequency shift. Simulation results are provided to show the great potential of DAM for ISAC.