W-band photonic-aided mm-wave ISAC system enabled by a shared OFDM signal waveform and a two-stage carrier frequency recovery algorithm.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems will play a potential role in the upcoming six-generation (6G) networks. The reason is that ISAC systems can effectively solve the spectrum resource shortage problem and decrease the cost of deploying hardware equipment for simultaneously realizing communication and sensing. In this Letter, we successfully realize a W-band photonic-aided millimeter-wave (mm-wave) ISAC system enabled by a shared orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM) signal waveform and two-stage carrier frequency recovery (CFR) algorithm. The digital-signal-processing (DSP)-based two-stage CFR algorithm includes the first-stage fractional frequency offset (FFO) estimation and compensation as well as the second-stage integer frequency offset (IFO) estimation and compensation. We experimentally analyze and verify that, with the introduction of the two-stage CFR algorithm, the system robustness to carrier frequency offset can be significantly enhanced. We also experimentally demonstrate, based on the ISAC system and our receiver DSP, a net data rate of up to 47.54 Gbit/s with a total signal bandwidth of 16 GHz over a 5.2 m wireless link at 94.5 GHz. Moreover, the sensing results indicate that the ISAC system can realize the detection of one target 2 m away from the transmitter with a ranging resolution of 0.98 cm and a ranging error of 4 mm. The system is anticipated to facilitate diverse potential applications in future 6G networks.