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Main Authors: Zhang, Yubo, Venturino, Luca, Wang, Xiaodong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15502
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author Zhang, Yubo
Venturino, Luca
Wang, Xiaodong
author_facet Zhang, Yubo
Venturino, Luca
Wang, Xiaodong
contents This work considers a system where a dual-function radar transmitter (source) performs direct communication with a reader while simultaneously enabling ambient backscatter communication from a tag. The source embeds its message into a coded pulse repeatedly transmitted over a frame, whereas the tag exploits the resulting environmental reverberation (clutter) as an ambient carrier to convey its own message. By leveraging the structure induced by the radar waveforms, we develop two signaling schemes. In the pilot-free scheme, the source and tag messages are conveyed through nonlinear vector modulation; the induced subspace structure enables both joint decoding, where all unknown quantities are simultaneously estimated, and disjoint decoding, where the tag codeword is recovered first, followed by the estimation of the source codeword and the channel vectors. In the pilot-aided scheme, pilot symbols and linearly modulated data symbols are embedded within each frame, enabling both non-iterative decoding based on pilot-derived channel estimates and iterative decoding via alternating channel estimation and data detection. We establish sufficient conditions on the source and tag codebooks that guarantee noiseless identifiability of the involved messages and channels. Finally, performance is evaluated in terms of source/tag error probabilities and channel-estimation accuracy, and the resulting system-level tradeoffs are discussed.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_15502
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Direct and Ambient Backscatter Communications with a Dual-Function Radar Transmitter
Zhang, Yubo
Venturino, Luca
Wang, Xiaodong
Signal Processing
This work considers a system where a dual-function radar transmitter (source) performs direct communication with a reader while simultaneously enabling ambient backscatter communication from a tag. The source embeds its message into a coded pulse repeatedly transmitted over a frame, whereas the tag exploits the resulting environmental reverberation (clutter) as an ambient carrier to convey its own message. By leveraging the structure induced by the radar waveforms, we develop two signaling schemes. In the pilot-free scheme, the source and tag messages are conveyed through nonlinear vector modulation; the induced subspace structure enables both joint decoding, where all unknown quantities are simultaneously estimated, and disjoint decoding, where the tag codeword is recovered first, followed by the estimation of the source codeword and the channel vectors. In the pilot-aided scheme, pilot symbols and linearly modulated data symbols are embedded within each frame, enabling both non-iterative decoding based on pilot-derived channel estimates and iterative decoding via alternating channel estimation and data detection. We establish sufficient conditions on the source and tag codebooks that guarantee noiseless identifiability of the involved messages and channels. Finally, performance is evaluated in terms of source/tag error probabilities and channel-estimation accuracy, and the resulting system-level tradeoffs are discussed.
title Direct and Ambient Backscatter Communications with a Dual-Function Radar Transmitter
topic Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15502