Cross-Frame OTFS Parameter Estimation Based On Chinese Remainder Theorem

Abstract: Orthogonal time-frequency space (OTFS) is a potential waveform for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems because it can manage communication and sensing metrics in one unified domain, and has better performance in high mobility scenarios. In practice, a target might come from far distance or with ultra-high speed. However, the max unambiguous range and max tolerable velocity of OTFS-ISAC system is limited by the unambiguous round-trip delay and Doppler shift, which are related to OTFS frame, i.e., time slots and subcarrier spacing, respectively. To enlarge the sensing range, a novel OTFS cross-frame ranging and velocity estimation model as well as its corresponding method based on the Chinese remainder theorem (CRT) are proposed in this paper. By designing co-prime numbers of subcarriers and time slots in different subframes, the difference in the responses of the subframes for a target can be used to estimate the distance and velocity of an out-of-range target. Several frame structures are further designed for specific sensing scenarios, such as target with ultra-high speed or at far distance. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve significantly better performance in NMSE compared with the classic sensing methods under the condition of same time and frequency resources.