Guest editorial: Advanced signal processing for integration of radar and communication (IRC)

Radar and communication are two key applications of radio technology, and they occupy a large portion of the frequency spectrum. Traditionally, radar and communication systems are operated at different frequencies, owing to their different functions and application areas. For instance, radar was mainly employed for sensing (target detection, localization, recognition, imaging, etc.) in the military field, while wireless communication was mainly for information delivery. However, along with the fast development of radio technologies and huge demand for information, the radio frequency (RF) spectrum is becoming increasingly congested, and the spectra of the radar system will be overlaid with those of wireless communication devices. Moreover, radar and communication are becoming increasingly merged in both technologies and applications. Besides the military field, radar has been widely employed in daily life including weather service, air traffic control, autonomous driving and security monitoring. Meanwhile, these applications rely Largely on information transmission through wireless communications. In this regard, integration of radar and communication (IRC) has proved to be a very promising development to address the spectrum congestion issue between radar and communications devices. This also brings us a number of key challenges in signal processing for both implementation of IRC and joint optimization between the two systems.