1002 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO.
3, SEPTEMBER 2021
Hybrid Beamforming for Multi-Carrier
Dual-Function Radar-Communication System
Ziyang Cheng , Member, IEEE, Zishu He , and Bin Liao , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper investigates a hybrid beamforming
design for dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) systems.
Comparing with fully digital beamforming, much less radio
frequency (RF) chains are needed and hence, both hardware
cost and energy consumption can be reduced. The hybrid
transmit/receive beamformers are designed by maximizing the
sum-rate under constraints of power as well as similarity between
the designed beamformer and the reference one that has good
beampattern property. Particularly, both single-user and multi-
user scenarios are addressed by introducing different hybrid
beamforming designs. For the single-user case, we devise an
alternating optimization method under the alternating direction
method of multipliers (ADMM) framework. For the multi-user
scenario, we introduce a two-stage procedure based on weighted
mean-square error minimization (WMMSE). Numerical simu-
lations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the
proposed schemes.
Index Terms—Dual-function radar-communication (DFRC),
hybrid beamfoming, multiple frequency signalings, subarray,
weighted mean-square error minimization (WMMSE).
I. I NTRODUCTION
URING the past decade, the radio frequency (RF) spec-
D trum congestion of commercial wireless devices has
brought about the wide attention in the fields of both radar
and communication. With the increased number of connected
wireless devices, the spectrum of radar system is overlaid
with that of communication devices. For example, the Long
Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax systems partially over-
lap with S-band radar systems [1]. The coexistence between
Manuscript received September 19, 2020; revised January 9, 2021 and
February 17, 2021; accepted February 26, 2021. Date of publication
March 2, 2021; date of current version September 9, 2021. This work was
supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grant 62001084, Grant 62031007, and Grant 61771316; in part
by the Postdoctoral Innovation Talents Support Program of China under
Grant BX20190062; in part by the Chinese Postdoctoral Science Foundation
under Grant 232908; in part by the Fundamental Research Funds of Central
Universities under Grant ZYGX2019J005; in part by the Guangdong Basic and
Applied Basic Research Foundation under Grant 2020A1515010410; and in
part by the Guangdong Special Support Program. This work was presented, in
part, at the IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop
(SAM), Virtual Conference, June 2020, and in part at the IEEE Radar
Conference, Virtual Conference, September 2020. The associate editor coor-
dinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was F. Gao.
(Corresponding author: Ziyang Cheng.)
Ziyang Cheng and Zishu He are with the School of Information
and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science
and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China (e-mail:
zycheng@uestc.edu.cn; zshe@uestc.edu.cdn).
Bin Liao is with the Guangdong Key Laboratory of Intelligent Information
Processing, College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen
University, Shenzhen 518060, China (e-mail: binliao@szu.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCCN.2021.3063110
2332-7731 
c 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) and radar in
1.7 and 3.5 GHz is an emerging topic within the U.S. due
to the designation of cognitive sharing systems in these
bands [2]. Additionally, the global system for mobile com-
munications (GSM) utilizes 1710-1880 MHz band which
may be shared by high ultra-high frequency (UHF) radar
systems [3]. Emerging techniques for coexistence of radar
and communication systems are thus developed to allevi-
ate the spectrum congestion, by simultaneously sharing the
same spectral resources among the radar and communication
devices [4].
To achieve coexistence of radar and communications, exist-
ing methods can be generally classified into three categories.
More specifically, the first category designs radar waveforms
with desired spectral nulls and hence, the interfering energy
produced by radar system to other devices can be restricted
to an acceptable level [5]–[8]. For instance, in [7], the
spectrally compatible waveform for phased-array radar is con-
sidered by maximizing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise
ratio (SINR), subject to individual requirements for the energy
of the overlaid frequency bands. This method was extended to
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar in [8] by min-
imizing the waveform energy of overlayed space-frequency
bands, subject to constraints on the waveform similarity and
individual SINR levels for multiple targets. Note that these
methods were designed for scenarios of widely separated
spectra.
The second category, adopting co-designs for two platforms
sharing the same spectrum, can overcome the limitation of the
aforementioned methods [9]–[17]. The pioneering work [9]
devised a transmit beamformer of MIMO radar, by project-
ing the radar signal onto the null-space of the interference
channels between the communication and radar, thus zero-
forcing the interference imposing on the communication link.
Moreover, Li et al. [12] proposed a joint design of radar sam-
pling and communication codebook for co-existence of MIMO
communication system and matrix completion-based MIMO
radars. Besides, in [15], the co-design of radar pulse codes and
communication encoding matrix is studied for co-existence of
pulsed radar and communication system in the presence of
signal-dependent interference. In [16], the transceiver for the
cellular base station (BS) and power allocation for uplink users
are jointly designed to maximize the detection probability of
MIMO radar, under the conditions of a pre-defined quality-of-
service for each user and power budget for uplink users and
BS. Recently, we introduced a joint optimization of the radar
waveform and communication transmit weights by minimizing
 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM
the Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) of target parameter estimation
in [17]. It is worth noting that these co-design methods do not
take into account the hardware cost nor difficulties of carrying
two different systems in practice.
To overcome the drawbacks of the second category methods,
the design for dual-function radar-communication (DFRC)
system where radar and communications share the same plat-
form [18]–[28], has been attracted much attention in recent
years. Some theoretical performance analyses have been per-
formed in [18], [19], but it is yet to consider what benefits can
be achieved in practice. For a practical system, dual-function
waveform is designed to guarantee the target detection for
radar while carrying information in [22] and [21]. A trans-
mit beampattern for MIMO radar is devised in [25] to embed
the information bits in sidelobe levels. To increase the data
rate, frequency hopping codes were utilized to generate a set
of orthogonal waveforms in [26], where a phase-shift keying
(PSK) communication symbol is embedded in each orthogo-
nal waveform. Moreover, a common transmitter is exploited to
detect radar targets and communicate with downlink cellular
users simultaneously in [27].
It should be noted that the above designs employ an archi-
tecture of full RF chains, which would lead to high hardware
cost and power consumption, especially in large-scale arrays
which offers orders of magnitude improvement in spectral
and power efficiency [29]. Recently, the analog/digital hybrid
beamforming has been shown to be a promising method to
deal with this problem. More specifically, a small number
of RF chains are adopted to achieve digital beamforming
to ensure necessary performance requirement, and a large
number of phase shifters (PSs) are used to realize analog
beamforming [30]–[38]. In [30], an optimal hybrid precoding
design is proposed for a particular case where the number of
RF chain is larger than twice of data streams. However, the
solution for general case is yet to be studied. Based on the
alternating method, a two-stage approach is proposed in [33]
to design hybrid precoder for millimeter wave (mmWave)
MIMO system in an indirect manner. More concretely, the
fully digital beamformer is firstly obtained, and then the hybrid
beamformer is designed by minimizing the matching error
between the designed one and the fully digital one. In [36],
the problem of hybrid precoder and combiner design is con-
sidered for mmWave MIMO systems with low-resolution PSs,
and a low-cost scheme to compensate for severe path-loss of
communication system is reported. Further, [38] develops the
hybrid precoding solutions and codebooks for limited feedback
wideband mmWave systems. Note that, the above-mentioned
hybrid beamforming approaches focus on the communication
systems.
For DFRC systems, the recent work [39] proposed to design
a hybrid transmit beamformer to approach the fully-digital
communication beamformer, by minimizing the weighted sum-
mation of the communication and radar beamforming errors.
Unlike this method, in our work, we consider both the trans-
mit and receive hybrid beamforming design, by maximizing
the sum-rate under constraints of power as well as similar-
ity between the designed beamformer and reference one. The
advanced design in this work is thus much different from and
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1003
more complicated and challenging to solve than the designed
in [39].
The main contributions of this work are summarized as
follows:
• We propose a scheme for multi-carrier DFRC system with
subarray architecture serving multiple users, in which the
communication symbols are embedded in MIMO radar
by exploiting multiple carriers.
• With the criterion of sum-rate maximization, which repre-
sents the communication performance, we formulate the
problem of hybrid beamforming design for the DFRC
system by imposing a power constraint and similarity
constraint between the designed hybrid transmit beam-
former and the reference beamformer, to achieve a good
transmit beampattern behavior.
• For single-user case, we develop an alternating
optimization method under the alternating direction
method of multipliers (ADMM) framework [40] to
optimize the hybrid transmit beamformer. The optimal
solution of each primal variable is derived. Moreover,
the digital and analog receive beamformers are obtained
by generalized eigenvalue decomposition and coordinate
descent method (CDM) [41], [42], respectively.
• For multi-user case, a two-stage method is developed to
obtain the hybrid transmit and receive beamformers. The
weighted mean-square error minimization (WMMSE)
method [43] is applied to attain the optimal fully digital
transmit beamformer. A similar procedure to the single-
user scenario is devised to obtain the hybrid transmit and
receive beamformers.
Representative numerical examples are considered to illus-
trate the performance of proposed method for DFRC system
in terms of the achievable rate, transmit beampattern behavior
and robustness of the proposed method to imperfect channel
estimation.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
In Section II, the signal model and optimization problem
for DFRC system are presented. The proposed alternating
optimization method based on ADMM is developed to solve
the resulting problem for single-user scenario in Section III,
and the two-stage method based on the WMMSE method
is devised for multi-user scenario in Section IV. Section V
presents various numerical simulations. Conclusions are drawn
in Section VI.
Notation: Vectors and matrices are denoted by lower case
boldface letter a and upper case boldface letter A, respec-
tively. (·)T and (·)H represent the transpose and conjugate
transpose operators, respectively. The sets of n-dimensional
complex-valued (real-valued) vectors and N × N complex-
valued (real-valued) matrices are denoted by Cn (Rn ) and
CN ×N (RN ×N ), respectively. {·} and {·} are typically
reserved for the real part and the imaginary part of a complex-
valued number, respectively. vec(A) and Tr(A) denotes the
vectorization and trace of A, respectively. The operator resh-
pae (x, n ,m) returns an n × m matrix whose elements are
taken column-wise from x. IN denotes the N × N identity
matrix. ⊗ and  denote the Kronecker product and Hardmard
product, respectively. The n-th entry of a is written as a(n).
 1004 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

Fig. 1. Overview of a DFRC system, where the transmit array adopts the partially connected structure to advocate for low-cost system, while the receive
array at each user adopts the fully-connected structure.

· and  · F denotes the l2 norm and Frobenius norm, where


respectively.
√ Finally, E{·} stands for the statistical expectation. 1, 0 < t < Δt
j = −1 denotes the imaginary unit and Bdiag{·} denotes rect(t) =
0, otherwise.
block diagonal matrix.
Assume that Δf is selected to ensure the following orthog-
onal condition:
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ROBLEM F ORMULATION
 N
 
Let us consider a narrowband DFRC system which focuses ψu (t)ψū∗ (t)dt = ∗
su,n sū,n e j2π(u−ū)Δft
the energy on the spatial sections of the targets of interest T0 n=1 Δt
and sends communication symbols to downlink users simulta- × rect(t − (n − 1)Δt)dt
neously. The Mt -element transmit array is divided into Nsub
non-overlapped subarrays, each of which has Mt /Nsub anten- = 0, u = ū. (2)
nas connected to an RF chain through analog phase shifters. It can be verified that if Δf = k /Δt, k = ±1, ±2, . . . , the
U users are served and each user is equipped with Mr anten- modulated signals ψu (t), u = 1, . . . , U , are orthogonal.
nas and NrRF RF chains, and we assume NrRF < Mr . In hybrid beamforming structure, the digital baseband signal
Without loss of generality, the transmit array is assumed to ψ(t) = [ψ1 (t), . . . , ψU (t)]T is processed by a digital beam-
be half-wavelength spaced uniform linear array (ULA). In former TD ∈ CNsub ×U , then converted to the RF domain via
the architecture under consideration, the number of trans- Nsub RF chains.1 Next, the RF signals are fed to the anten-
mit (receive) RF chains is smaller than that of antennas at nas through an RF beamformer TRF ∈ CMt ×Nsub , which
the transmit (receive) end. Thus, hybrid digital and analog is realized by analog phase shifters. Note that, as shown in
beamforming scheme will be applied, as shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 1, we assume that the transmit array adopts a partially con-
nected structure, while the receive array for each user adopts
A. Transmit Model a fully connected structure. Thus, the structure of TRF can be
Suppose that the concatenation of each user’s data stream expressed as a block diagonal matrix as
is embedded into U subcarrier signals φu (t) = e j2πuΔft , u =  
TRF = Bdiag p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub ∈ CMt ×Nsub (3)
1, . . . , U , where Δf is the frequency step. It is assumed that
φu (t), u = 1, . . . , U , are orthogonal with unit energy, i.e., where pi ∈ CMt /Nsub , i = 1, . . . , Nsub , is an Mt /Nsub
  dimensional vector with each element being constant mod-
∗ 1, u = ū
φu (t)φū (t)dt = ulus value, i.e., |pi (j )| = 1, j = 1, . . . , Mt /Nsub . According
T0 0, u = ū
to the above model, the transmitted signal can be written as
where T0 is transmit pulse duration. Specifically, during each
transmit pulse T0 , N symbols su = [su,1 , . . . , su,N ]T can be x(t) = TRF TD ψ(t) = Tψ(t) (4)
embedded, the symbol width is Δt, i.e., T0 = N Δt. It is where
assumed that the symbols for different users are independent
with zero-mean and covariance matrix E{su s†u } = IN . T  TRF TD ∈ CMt ×U (5)
During the transmit pulse T0 , the modulated set of the can be viewed as the transmit beamspace matrix.
signals is defined as
1 Unlike the OFDM architecture in [44], where a particular digital baseband
N
 beamformer is used for a particular sub-carrier to precode the data, in this work
ψu (t) = su,n e j2πuΔft rect(t − (n − 1)Δt) (1) we adopt an FDM architecture and the modulated signals of all sub-carriers
n=1 (users) are processed by a common a digital beamformer.

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 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM 1005

B. Communication Model where at (θ) is the transmit steering vector defined as

For user u, the received signal can be written as 1  jπ sin θ T
at (θ) = √ 1, e , . . . , e jπ(Mt −1) sin θ . (13)
ru (t) = Hu TRF TD ψ(t) + vu (t) (6) Mt
According to (12), the transmit power distribution P (θ) can
where Hu ∈ CMr ×Mt is the channel state information (CSI) be written as
from the transmitter to user u. Following [12], the downlink 
channels {Hu } are assumed to be flat Rayleigh fading, and P (θ) = |y(t, θ)|2 dt = aT H ∗
t (θ)TT at (θ). (14)
remain unchanged during one pulse and are perfectly esti- T0
mated by pilot symbols. vu (t) is additive Gaussian noise For radar probing purpose, it is desirable to focus the
vector with zero mean and covariance matrix σv2 IMr . The user transmit energy on the spatial sections of interest. Hence,
u first processes the received signal via the RF beamformer the transmit beamspace matrix T should be designed with
WRF,u ∈ CNr ×Mr implemented by analog phase shifters. good beampattern behavior (e.g., low sidelobe level or good
Since the receive array for each user adopts fully-connected beampattern matching performance). Thus, it is required that
structure, we have |WRF,u (i , j )| = 1 for 1 ≤ i ≤ Nr and the transmit beamspace matrix T is similar to a reference
1 ≤ j ≤ Mr . one, denoted as T , which has the desired properties. For
The received signal zu (t) ∈ CNr ×1 after RF processing can instance, the corresponding beampattern is usually required to
be written as have a given sidelobe level [47]. Mathematically, a similarity
constraint should be imposed as
zu (t) = WRF,u ru (t)
= WRF,u Hu TRF TD ψ(t) + WRF,u vu (t) (7) T − T F = TRF TD − T F ≤ ε (15)
where ε > 0 is a parameter to control the level of similarity.
which is then demodulated as
 Related problems with such a consideration have been studied
qu,n = zu (t)e −j2πuΔft rect(t − nΔt)dt in [48]–[50]. It should be highlighted that T may not guaran-
Δt tee good communication rates for the users. Thus, in practice,
1  ε > 0 should be properly selected to achieve a desired trade-
= WRF,u Hu TRF TD u su,n + nu,n (8)
N off between the communication achievable rate and the desired
where [ · ]u denotes the u-th column of a matrix. nu,n = radar beampattern behavior,
WRF,u Δt vu (t)e −j2πuΔft rect(t − nΔt)dt is the additive
σ2
H D. Problem Formulation
term with zero mean and variance matrix Nv2 WRF,u WRF,u .
Next, a digital beamformer wD,u ∈ CN ×1 is used to retrieve According to above models for both radar and communica-
the symbol as tion, the problem of hybrid beamforming for the DFRC system
can thus be formulated as
H
ŝu,n = wD,u qu,n U

1 H   H max αu Ru (16a)
= wD,u WRF,u Hu TRF TD u su,n + wD,u nu,n . (9) TD ,TRF ,WRF,u ,wD,u
N u=1

Accordingly, the SNR of the u-th user can be expressed as s.t. Tr TRF TD TH H
D TRF ≤ E (16b)

 H
2  


TRF = Bdiag p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub (16c)

WRF,u Hu TRF TD u wD,u

γu = H W H
(10) |pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ;
σv2 wD,u RF,u WRF,u wD,u
1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub (16d)

and the achievable rate of the u-th user is thus given by [30]
WRF,u (i , j )
= 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nr ;
Ru = log(1 + γu ).
C. Radar Model
It is known that MIMO radar with orthogonal waveforms
offers an enlarged virtual array aperture and achieves higher
Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) than traditional phased-array
radar. Unlike the omin-directional MIMO radar, in our trans-
mit model, the number of orthogonal waveforms is less than
the number of transmit antennas, i.e., U < Mt , and thus
the proposed scheme can balance the size of the virtual
array and transmit beamforming gain based on subspace-based
method [45], [46]. The signal radiated towards a target located
at θ direction can be modeled as
y(t, θ) = aT T
t (θ)x(t) = at (θ)Tψ(t)
(11) 1 ≤ j ≤ Mr (16e)
TRF TD − T F ≤ ε, (16f)
where α1 , . . . , αU are the weights representing the priority
of the users, the similarity constraint (16f) allows the trans-
mit beamformer TRF TD to make a compromise between the
achievable sum-rate and transmit beampattern property [46].
In what follows, we shall first study the hybrid beamforming
problem in the special case of a single user, i.e., U = 1, then
discuss the general case of multiple users, i.e., U > 1.
III. H YBRID B EAMFORMING IN S INGLE -U SER S CENARIO
In this section, we consider a specific scenario in which the
DFRC system sends the communication to a single user. In
(12) this case, the digital beamformer TD is reduced to a vector

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 1006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

tD ∈ CNsub , and T is reduced to t ∈ CMt . For such a Placing the bi-linear equality constraint into the augmented
scenario, the optimization problem is simplified to Lagrangian function (scaled form) of (19) yields
⎛

2 ⎞ ρ

[W HT t ]H
w

⎟ Lρ (t, tD , TRF , v) = −tH Qw t + t − TRF tD + v2 (20)
⎜ RF RF D D 2
max d log⎝1 + 2 H H ⎠
tD ,TRF ,WRF ,wD σv wD WRF WRF wD where v ∈ CMt and ρ > 0 is a penalty parameter. Therefore, at
the (k + 1)-th iteration, the corresponding ADMM framework
(17a)
 takes the following iterations:
s.t. Tr TRF tD tH H
D TRF ≤E (17b)
(k ) (k )

  t(k +1) ← min Lρ t, tD , TRF , v(k )
TRF = Bdiag p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub (17c) t

|pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ; s. t. tH t ≤ E , t − t  ≤ ε (21a)


(k +1) (k )
1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub (17d) tD ← min Lρ t(k +1) , tD , TRF , v(k ) (21b)
tD
|WRF (i , j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nr ; 
(k +1) (k +1)
TRF ← min Lρ t(k +1) , tD , TRF , v(k )
1 ≤ j ≤ Mr (17e) TRF
TRF tD − t  ≤ ε (17f) s. t. |TRF (i , j )| = 1 (21c)
(k +1) (k ) (k +1) (k +1) (k +1)
v ←v +t − TRF tD .
Obviously, the optimization problem (17) is non-convex and
is difficult to solve. Towards that end, in what follows, we shall (21d)
convert the complex problem into a series of subproblems and Steps (21a) to (21d) are repeated until a termination condi-
seek a suboptimal solution through an alternating optimization tion is satisfied, such as maximum iteration number NADMM
algorithm. More specifically, the following optimization steps is reached. In the following, the solutions to problems (21a)
will be applied: and (21c) are presented.
(1) Optimizing the transmit beamformers tD and TRF by 1) Solution to (21a): The problem (21a) can be written as
assuming the receive beamformers WRF,u and wD,u are
ρ
available. min −tH Qw t + t − TRF tD + v2
t,tD 2
(2) Given the optimized transmit beamformers tD and TRF ,
we optimize the receive beamformers WRF,u and wD,u . s. t. tH t ≤ E
This procedure is repeated until the iteration is converged. t − t  ≤ ε (22)
which can be tackled in an iterative manner. The solutions of
A. Hybrid Transmit Beamformer Design
this problem with respect to t and tD are discussed below.
First, we consider the design of tD and TRF with a fixed We note that since the strong duality holds true for
WRF,u and wD,u . The transmit beamformer design problem problem (22) with respect to t [51], we can find its optimal
can be written as solution by the KKT conditions. Specifically, the Lagrangian
max (TRF tD )H Qw TRF tD function of problem (22) can be expressed as

tD ,TRF ρ
 L = −tH Qw t + t − TRF tD + v2 + λ1 tH t − E
s.t. Tr TRF tD tH T H
D RF ≤ E 2 
TRF = Bdiag{p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub } + λ2 t − t 2 − ε2 (23)
|pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub where λ1 ≥ 0 and λ2 ≥ 0 are dual variables associated

TRF tD − t  ≤ ε (18) with tH t ≤ E and t − t 2 ≤ ε2 , respectively. Then the
corresponding KKT conditions are given by
where Qw = HH WRF H w wH W
D D RF H is a rank-one semidef-
inite matrix. The problem is nonconvex and there exists t = (−Qw + (ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 )IMt )−1
coupling between tD and TRF in constraints, the typical alter- × (ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v + λ2 t ), (24a)
nating optimization method may fail in this case. Therefore, H  2 2
t t ≤ E , t − t  ≤ ε (24b)
this paper proposes to apply the ADMM-based algorithm [40]
λ1 ≥ 0, λ2 ≥ 0 (24c)
to tackle the problem (18).  
Recalling (5), the problem (18) can be recast as λ1 t t − E = 0, λ2 t − t 2 − ε2 = 0
H
(24d)

min −tH Qw t where (24a) is the first-order optimality condition, (24b)

t,tD ,tRF
and (24c) are the primal and dual feasibility conditions, (24d)
s.t. t = TRF tD is the complementary condition.
tH t ≤ E According to (24d), we can analyze the solution to t in the
TRF = Bdiag{p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub } following four cases:
|pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub a) For λ1 = 0 and λ2 = 0, from the (24a) we have
t − t  ≤ ε. (19) t = (−Qw + ρ/2IMt )−1 (ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v) (25)

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 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM 1007

which must satisfy the condition (24b). Algorithm 1 Solving Problem (22) With Respect to t
b) For λ1 = 0 and λ2 = 0, from (24d), we have 1: Given the matrices Qw , TRF , tD and v.
 −1
2: Compute t = Qw + ρ/2IMt (ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v).
t − t 2 = ε2 . 2    2 2
(26) 
3: if t ≤ E & t − t  ≤ ε then
4: t = t
By (24a), the optimal solution is given by 5: else
 −1   6: Obtain the solution λ2 to problem (29), and compute
t = −Qw + (ρ/2 + λ2 )IMt ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v + λ2 t .
ρ  −1 ρ ρ 
(27) t = Qw + + λ2 IMt TRF tD − v + λ2 t ,
2 2 2
Let −Qw = UΣUH be the eigen-decomposition of −Qw .
7: if t2 ≤ E then
Since Qw is rank-one as defined below (18), it can be inferred
8: t = t
that Σ = diag(σ1 , 0, . . . , 0) with σ1 = 0. Plugging (27) into 9: else
the equality constraint in (26) yields 10: Obtain the solution λ1 to problem (31), and compute
  2 ρ  −1 ρ
  ρ 
t − t 2F = Σ̃UH b + λ2 Σ̃ − IMt UH t  t = Qw + + λ1 IMt TRF tD − v ,
2 2 2


Mt

b1 − (ρ/2 + σ1 )t 
2
bi − ρ t 
2   2
= 1
+ i=2 2 i 11: if t − t  ≤ ε2 then
(ρ/2 + λ2 + σ1 )2 (ρ/2 + λ2 )2 12: t = t
= ε2 (28) 13: else
14: Obtain the solutions λ1 and λ2 to problem (33), and
where Σ̃ = diag( ρ/2+λ1 +σ , ρ/2+λ 1 1
, . . . , ρ/2+λ ) and b = compute
2 1 2 2 ρ  −1
ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v. t = Qw + + λ1 + λ2 IMt
Define ρ2 ρ 


Mt

× TRF tD − v + λ2 t ,

b1 − (ρ/2 + σ1 )t 
2
bi − ρ t 
2 2 2
1 i=2 2 i
h(λ2 ) = + . (29)
(ρ/2 + λ2 + σ1 )2 (ρ/2 + λ2 )2 15: if λ1 ≥ 0, λ2 ≥ 0 then
16: t = t
It is obvious that the function h(λ2 ) is monotonically decreas- 17: else
ing for λ2 ≥ 0, and hence the solution of h(λ2 ) = ε2 can be 18: This problem has no solution.
obtained by the bisection or Newton’s method [51]. Then, we 19: end if
can attain the solution of t from (26). Moreover, the achieved 20: end if
21: end if
solution of t should meet the constraint tH t ≤ E . 22: end if
c) For λ1 = 0 and λ2 = 0, from (24a) and (24d), we obtain

b1 − (ρ/2 + λ1 + σ1 )T 
2
t = (−Qw + (ρ/2 + λ1 )IMt )−1 (ρ/2TRF tD − ρ/2v)  2
t − t  = 1
(30a) (ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 + σ1 )2
Mt
ρ  
2
tH t = E .

(30b)
+ i=2 bi − 2 + λ1 Ti
(ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 )2
Substituting (30a) into (30b) yields
Mt = ε2 (33b)
 2 2 2
 
tH t = Σ̂Ub =
|b1 |
+ i=2 |bi |
which is a problem of nonlinear multi-variable equations. It
(ρ/2 + λ1 + σ1 )2 (ρ/2 + λ1 )2
can be solved by using the Newton’s method (we can use the
=E (31)
function ‘fsolve’ in MATLAB). Besides, the resultant λ1 and
where Σ̂ = diag( ρ/2+λ1 +σ , ρ/2+λ
1 1
, . . . , ρ/2+λ ). Define λ2 should satisfy λ1 > 0, λ2 > 0.
1
 1 1
Mt
|b |2
1
Note that the inversion (−Qw + (ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 )IMt )−1
|b |2
f (λ1 ) = 1
+ i=2 i 2 , we obtain the solution can be done by the matrix inversion lemma in advance. In
(ρ/2+λ1 +σ1 )2 (ρ/2+λ1 )
of f (λ1 ) = E , similar to the previous case. Then, the solution summary, the main steps of solving problem (22) with respect
of t is achieved according to the obtained λ1 , and it is needed to t are described in Algorithm 1.
to meet the constraint t − t 2 ≤ ε2 . 2) Solution to (21b): We now solve the problem (22) with
d) For λ1 = 0 and λ2 = 0, by (24d), one gets respect to tD . In fact, we only need to solve the following
unconstraint problem:
tH t = E , t − t 2 = ε2 (32)
min t − TRF tD + v2 (34)
Plugging (24a) into (32), we have tD


Mt

b1 + λ2 T 
2
bi + λ2 T 
2 which yields the least squares solution as
H 1 i=2 i
t t= + −1
(ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 + σ1 )2 (ρ/2 + λ1 + λ2 )2
tD = T H RF TRF THRF (t + v). (35)
=E (33a)

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 1008 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

Algorithm 2 The CDM-Based Method for Solving Problem Algorithm 3 The ADMM-Based Algorithm for Solving
(36) Problem (18)
1: Input: T0 RF .
(0) (0)
1: Initialize t(0) , tD , TRF and v(0) , penalty parameters ρ > 0,
2: Set l = 1. and convergence tolerance ADMM > 0.
3: repeat 2: Set k = 1.
4: for i = 1, · · · , Mt do 3: repeat
M Mt
5: for j = (i − 1) t + 1, · · · , i do 4: Update t(k ) by using Algorithm 1;
Nsub Nsub (k )
Update tD according to (35);
Compute ηij and update TlRF (i, j ) e jΦ(i,j ) ,
5:
6: =
(k )
Φ(i, j ) = ∠ηij + π. 6: Update TRF by using Algorithm 2;
(k +1) (k +1)
7: end for 7: Update V(k +1) ← v(k ) + t(k +1) − TRF tD .
8: end for. Set k= k + 1.
l = l + 1.
8:   
9:  (k ) (k −1)   (k ) (k −1) 
9: until tD − tD  ≤ ADMM , TRF − TRF  ≤
10: until TlRF − Tl−1 RF  ≤ CDM . ADMM .
11: return TRF = TlRF . (k ) (k )
10: return tD = tD and TRF = TRF .

3) Solution to (21c): The problem (21c) is needs obtaining solutions of λ1 and λ2 , and matrix multipli-
min t − TRF tD + v 2 cation with complexities of O(Mt2 ) and O(Mt2 ). Solving (26)
TRF needs a complexity of O(Nsub 3 + N 2 M ). Solving (36) with
  sub t
TRF = Bdiag p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub BCD method needs a complexity of O(I1 Mt Nsub ), where
|pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub (36) I1 is the number of iterations required in BCD method. To
summarize, the overall complexity of the ADMM method is
which is nonconvex due to the constant modulus constraint. O(I0 (Mt2 + Nsub
3 + N2 M + I M N
sub t 1 t sub )), where I0 is the
Nevertheless, this problem can be efficiently solved by the numbers of outer iterations.
CDM [41], [42]. At each iteration of this method, a single
block of variables are optimized, while the remaining variables B. Hybrid Receive Beamformer Design
are fixed. More exactly, the optimization problem with respect
In this subsection, we attempt to design the receive hybrid
to TRF (i , j ) is written as
  beamformer that maximizes the achievable rate in (17) assum-
min 2 TRF (i , j )ηij + const. ing that the transmit hybrid beamformer is given. The receive
TRF (i,j ) beamformer design problem is written as
s. t. |TRF (i , j )| = 1 (37) HW H
wD RF FWRF wD
where ηij is defined as max HW H
wD ,WRF wD RF WRF wD
⎛ ⎞∗
N
 sub s.t. |WRF (i , j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ NrRF ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mr (40)
ηij = tD (j )⎝ TRF (i , l )tD (l ) − g(i )⎠
where F = HTRF tD tH H H
D TRF H . Since the variables wD and
l=j
WRF are only coupled in the objective function, we can find
with the a solution of problem (40) by first finding the optimal wD
with a fixed WRF and then update WRF with a fixed wD .
g =t+v
Assuming that WRF is fixed, the digital receive beamformer
Defining TRF (i , j ) = e −jΦ(i,j ) , then (37) can be recast as an wD design problem can be written as
unconstrained optimization problem with respect to Φ(i , j ), as HW
wD H
  RF FWRF wD
max HW H
(41)
min cos −Φ(i , j ) + ∠ηij (38) wD wD RF WRF wD
Φ(i,j )
whose solution is the eigenvector corresponding to maximum
whose optimal solution is
generalized eigenvalue of WRF FWH H
RF and WRF WRF .
H
Next, defining x = vec(WRF ), the optimization of WRF
Φ(i , j ) = ∠ηij + π. (39)
can be expressed as
It is worth noting that since in each update of the proposed
CDM, the objective function in (36) is non-decreasing, thus the xH Ax
min
convergence of this algorithm can be guaranteed. The proposed x xH Bx
CDM-based method to solve problem (36) is summarized in s.t. |x(i )| = 1, ∀i (42)
Algorithm 2. where A and B are, respectively, defined as
Finally, the proposed ADMM-based method to design the
∗ T
hybrid transmit beamformer is given in Algorithm 3. A = wD wD ⊗ IMr
Note that the main computational complexity of the ADMM and
method for hybrid transmitter design is caused by solving 
∗ T
three subproblems, i.e., (22), (26), and (36). Solving (22) B = (wD ⊗ IMr )F wD ⊗ IMr

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 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM 1009

Similar to solving problem (36), we can find the solu- Algorithm 4 Design of Hybrid Receive Beamformer
tion of (42) by the CDM. Concretely, let x(i ) = e −jφi , the 1: Input: TD , TRF , wD 0 and W0 .
RF
optimization of x(i) can be formulated as an unconstrained 2: Set m = 1.
problem, as 3: repeat
(m)
 4: Update wD by taking the eigenvector corresponding to max-
2 e j φi d1,i + c1,i (m−1) (m−1) H
min κ(φi ) =   (43) imum generalized eigenvalue of WRF FWRF and
φi 2 e j φi d2,i + c2,i (m−1) (m−1) H
WRF WRF .
where d1,i , d2,i , c1,i and c2,i are, respectively, defined as 5: Set n = 1.
6: repeat
d1,i = Ai· x̄(i ) 7: for i = 1, · · · , Mr NrRF do
c1,i = Aii + x̄H (i )Ax̄(i ) 8: Compute d1,i , d2,i , c1,i and c2,i , and update x(n) (i)
according to (45).
d2,i = Bi· x̄(i ) 9: end for.
c2,i = Bii + x̄H (i )Bx̄(i ) 10: Set n = n + 1.
11: until x(n) − x(n−1)  ≤ ¯CDM .
H
with Ai· and Bi· being the i-th row of the matrices A and B, (m)
12: return WRF = reshape x(n) , NrRF , Mr
respectively, and 13: m = m + 1.
 T (m) (m−1) (m) (m−1)
14: until wD − wD  ≤ D and WRF − WRF  ≤
x̄(i ) = x(1), . . . , x(i − 1), 0, x(i + 1), . . . , x(Mr NrRF ) . RF .
(m) (m)
15: return wD = wD and WRF = WRF .
The following proposition provides the solution to
problem (43).
Proposition 1: The optimal solution for φi should be one
of the following two solutions: the transceiver design method in [33], a two-stage procedure
  is proposed. In the first stage, we split problem (16) into two
ξi
φi,1 = −ϑi + arcsin (44a) sub-problems with respect to fully digital transmit and receive
|γi | H
  beamformers T = TRF TD and wu = WRF,u wD,u . In the
ξi second stage, we iteratively optimize TRF and TD to approx-
φi,2 = π − ϑi − arcsin (44b)
|γi | imate the achieved T, and the hybrid receive beamforming
∗ d ), γ = c d
where ξi = 2(d1,i design is similar to that of the hybrid transmit beamform-
2,i i 2,i 1,i − c1,i d2,i and
⎧  ing design, except that an additional energy and similarity
⎨ arcsin (γi ) , (γi ) ≥ 0 constraints are required for the hybrid transmit beamforming
|γi | 
ϑi = (γ ) problem.
⎩ π − arcsin i
, otherwise
|γ | i From Eq. (10), we note that the solution to digital receive
Thus, the optimal φi is given by beamformer wu can be obtained by solving
     wuH Hu Tuu uH H H
φi,1 , κφi,1  ≤ κφi,2  u T Hu wu
φi = (45) max
wu σv2 wuH wu
(46)
φi,2 , κ φi,1 > κ φi,2 .
Proof: See Appendix A. where uu is an U × 1 vector with the u-th element being 1,
The proposed method for designing the hybrid receive and 0 elsewhere. Its optimal solution is given by
beamformer is summarized in Algorithm 4.
wu = Hu Tuu . (47)
Now we discuss the complexity of the hybrid receiver
design method, which consists of two steps. The update of For finding the solution to optimal digital transmit due T ,
wD needs a complexity of O(N 3 + (NrRF )2 N ), and the to the coupling relationship of fully digital transmit beam-
update of WRF with aid of BCD method takes a complex- formers in objective function, a direct method for solving
ity of O(I2 Mr2 N 2 ), I2 is the number of iterations required in the sum-rate maximization problem is often intractable. A
BCD method. Therefore, the overall complexity of the hybrid popular method for solving this problem is the WMMSE
receiver design method is O(I3 (N 3 +(NrRF )2 N +I2 Mr2 N 2 )), approach [43]. More precisely, under the assumption that su,n
where I3 is the numbers of outer iterations. and vu are independent, the mean-square estimation error can
be written as
IV. H YBRID B EAMFORMING IN M ULTI -U SER S CENARIO 

2 
eu = Esu,n ,vu
ŝu,n − su,n

Now, we consider the design of the hybrid beamformer in

2
a multi-user scenario. From Eq. (16), we notice that solving
1 H
σ2
=
wu Hu Tuu − 1

+ v2 wuH wu

problem (16) directly is challenging because the variables are N N

coupled in the objective function, and hence, the ADMM- 1 H 2 H 
based method adopted for single-user case, can not be directly = 2 wu Hu Tuu uH u T H H
H u w u −  w u H u Tuu
N N
applied to deal with problem (16). Moreover, the non-convex σ 2
constraints on RF beamformers TRF and WRF,u . Inspired by + 1 + v2 wuH wu (48)
N

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 1010 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

The following theorem establishes the equivalence between Algorithm 5 The WMMSE Method for Obtaining the T
the weighted sum-rate maximization and weight sum MSE 1: Initialize T(0) .
minimization. 2: Set k = 1.
Theorem 1: Let ωu , u = 1, . . . , U be positive weight 3: repeat
variables, the weighted sum-rate maximization problem with 4: Compute
respect to T is equivalent to −1
wu = N Hu Tuu uH H H 2
u T Hu + σv IMr Hu Tuu
U

min αu (ωu eu − log(ωu )) (49a) (k )
ωu ,T,wu 5: Compute eu from (48) with fixed T(k −1) and wu , update
u=1 ωu = 1/eu ,

s.t. Tr TTH ≤ E (49b) 6: Substituting ωu and wu into problem (49) and solving
 problem (52) to update T(k ) .
T − T F ≤ ε, (49c) 7: k = k + 1.
Set  
 
8: until T(k ) − T(k −1)  ≤ WMMSE .
Proof: See Appendix B.
This equivalence suggests that maximizing sum-rate with 9: return T = T(k ) .
respect to T can be tackled by the weighted MSE
minimization (49). Compared to the sum-rate maximization
problem, the weighted MSE minimization is easier to be and
addressed, this is because optimizing one variable while fixing  2
  H 
others is convex. min wu − WRF,u wD,u 
wD,u ,WRF,u
Fixing the transmit beamformer T, the optimal wu and ωu

s.t.
WRF,u (i , j )
= 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ NrRF ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mr
are given by
−1 (54)
wu = N Hu Tuu uH u T H H
H u + σ 2
I
v Mr Hu Tuu (50)
Now, analogous to the procedure for the single-user case, we
and can find the solutions to problems (53) and (54) according to
ωu = 1/eu . (51) the procedures in Algorithms 3 and 2, respectively.
The complexity of the hybrid beamformer design for multi-
Plugging (50) and (51) into problem (49), we can formulate user case can be approximately analyzed based on the total
the optimization problem with respect to T, as number of multiplications required by using the “two-stage”
 method. Specifically, in the first stage, the design of wu based
max τ H Ξτ − 2N  τ H ξ (52a) on (47) needs a complexity of O(Mt Mr N ), and the design
τ
s.t. τ 2 ≤ E (52b) of T by utilizing the WMMSE method takes a complexity
of O(I4 (Mr3 + Mt Mr N )), with I4 being the number of iter-
τ − vec(T ) ≤ ε, (52c)
ations required in the WMMSE method. In the second stage,
where τ = vec(T), and Ξ and ξ are, respectively, defined as the update of the hybrid transmit beamformer by the ADMM
takes a complexity of O(I5 (Mt2 + Nsub 3 + N 2 M ), where
sub t
U
 H 
I5 denotes the number of iterations required in the ADMM
Ξ= αu ωu uT
u ⊗ IMr HH H T
u wu wu Hu uu ⊗ IMr
for solving problem (53). Updating the hybrid receive beam-
u=1
former requires a complexity of O(I6 Mr2 N 2 ), where I6 is the
and number of iterations required in the BCD for obtaining the
U
 H WRF .
ξ= αu ωu uT
u ⊗ IMr HH
u wu
u=1
V. N UMERICAL S IMULATIONS
We note that the problem (52) is analogous to the problem (22)
In this section, several sets of numerical simulations are
and Algorithm 1 can be used to design T.
provided to assess the performance of the proposed algorithms.
Finally, the WMMSE-based approach for optimizing fully
We first design the hybrid transmit/receive beamformer for
digital transmit beamformer T is summarized in Algorithm 5.
single-user scenario, and then the hybrid beamforming design
After obtaining T and wu , the hybrid transmit and receive
for multi-user scenario is considered.
beamforming design problems can be formulated, respec-
Unless otherwise specified, in all simulations, we assume
tively, as
a DFRC system with Mt = 32 transmit antennas serves U
min T − TRF TD 2F users, each user is equipped with Mr = 4 antennas and
TD ,TRF
 NrRF = 2 RF chains. The length of the transmission sam-
s.t. Tr TRF TD TH T H
D RF ≤ E ples is N = 32. It is assumed that the CSI matrices Hu have
  independent entries, obey the distributions as CN (0, 1). The
TRF = Bdiag p1 , p2 , . . . , pNsub
weights for all users’ rates are αu = 1, ∀u. For the ADMM
|pi (j )| = 1, 1 ≤ i ≤ Nsub ; 1 ≤ j ≤ Mt /Nsub method, the penalty parameter and convergence tolerance are
TRF TD − T F ≤ ε (53) set to ρ = 200 and ADMM = 10−5 . We also set convergence

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 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM 1011

Fig. 2. The achievable rate values versus the outer iteration number. Nsub =
4 and ε = 0.3.
Fig. 3. The convergence performance of the ADMM method for different
initial points. Nsub = 4 and ε = 0.3.

tolerances of the CDM and WMMSE to be CDM = 10−6

and WMMSE = 10−5 , respectively.

A. Hybrid Beamforming for Single-User Scenario

In this subsection, we examine the performance of the
proposed method for the case of single user, i.e., U = 1. We
choose the reference transmit matrix (vector in this case) for
radar function to be t = h  at (θ1 ) with h being 30 dB
Chebyshev window and θ1 = −10◦ . The total power of the
transmit system is E = 1 and the noise variance in the user
σv = 0 dB. For comparison purpose, the case of fully-digital
beamformer (denoted by “fully-digital”), which provides the
optimal achievable rate, and the two-stage method in [33]
(denoted by “two-stage”) are also considered.
In order to assess the convergence of the proposed method, Fig. 4. The achievable values versus the similarity level for different number
of subarrays.
in Fig. 2, we display the achievable rate value versus the
outer iteration number by considering the number of subarrays
Nsub = 4 and similarity level ε = 0.3. It is observed that the
proposed method can converge quickly within 5 iterations and
attain satisfactory performance. Specifically, the performance
gap between our method and optimal fully-digital beamformer
is around 0.25 dB. Moreover, we note that the property of the
proposed method outperforms that of the “two-stage” method,
this highlights the superiority of our method.
Fig. 3 analyzes the influences of different initial points
on the convergence performance of the ADMM for solving
problem (18) with Nsub = 4 and ε = 0.3. Specifically,
we choose 15 initial points. For each initial point, we set the
entries of initial tD to obey CN (0, 1) and the corresponding
entries of initial TRF as e −jΦ , where Φ obeys uniform dis-
tribution over (0; 2π]. From the figure, we note that although
different initial points result in different objective values, the Fig. 5. Average SER for different similarity levels with Nsub = 4.
final objective function always converges to a certain value.
Fig. 4 shows the attained achievable rates of the proposed method. Moreover, it is also observed that as the number of
method and “two-stage” method versus the similarity level ε subarray increases, the performance gap between the proposed
for different numbers of subarray Nsub = 4, 8, 16, 32. We note method and “two-stage” method becomes smaller.
that the case of Nsub = 32 is equivalent to the fully-digital Fig. 5 analyzes the average symbol error rate (SER)
beamforming. As expected, the attained achievable rates performance of the designed hybrid beamformer by using the
increase along with the similarity values ε and the proposed quad phase shift keyed (QPSK) modulation, the average SER
method obtains better performance than the “two-stage” is obtained by performing 5000 independent trials. Fig. 5

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 1012 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

Fig. 6. The beampattern behaviors of the designed transmit beamformer with

Fig. 7. The average achievable values verse the channel estimation errors δ
ε = 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0.
for different numbers of subarrays.

shows the average SER for different similarity levels with

Nsub = 4. As expected, the average SER value decreases
as the similarity level ε increasing, and the change caused by
the similarity value larger than that caused by the number of
subarrays.
Next, we compare the transmit beampattern behaviors of
the designed hybrid transmit beamformers to that of the
reference beamformer t . Fig. 6 shows the achieved beam-
pattern level as a function of the detection direction θ. It
can be observed that as the similarity level ε increases, the
mainlobe-to-sidelobe ratio (MSR) become lower and lower.
More concretely, the achievable MSR values for these four
similarity levels are 17.12 dB, 11.52 dB, 6.04 dB, 0.259 dB,
respectively. Therefore, we should choose a suitable ε to Fig. 8. The achievable values versus the input SNR for different number of
achieve a good balance between the communication rate and subarrays. ε = 0.4.
radar beampattern property.
In previous simulations, we assume that the channel CSI
Hu is precisely known. Now, we analyze the impact of the
channel estimation error on the achievable rate. To this end,
we assume the actual CSI matrix Ĥu is molded as
√ √
Ĥu = 1 − δHu + δΔ (55)

where Hu is the estimated CSI, 0 ≤ δ ≤ 1 and the entries of

Δ obey the distribution CN (0, 1). We note that, when δ = 0,
the estimation of channel CSI is accurate, while when ε =
1, this estimation is completely undependable. The average
achievable rate is attained by performing 1000 Monte Carlo
simulations.
Fig. 7 shows the average rate values of the proposed method
as a function of the channel estimation error δ and sensor num-
ber of subarray Nsub when ε = 0.4. As expected, the average Fig. 9. The achievable values versus the similarity level for different number
of subarrays.
values of the achievable decrease with the δ. Furthermore, we
also find that as δ increases, the improvement of the commu-
nication rate by increasing the number of digital channel will
choose the reference transmit matrix for radar function to be
be more and more inapparent.
T = [0, 0, h  at (θ2 )] with θ2 = 40◦ .
Fig. 8 shows the achievable rate of the proposed WMMSE
B. Hybrid Beamforming for Multi-User Scenario method as a function of the input SNR values (SNR = E /σv2 )
In this subsection, we assess the achievable rate of the and the number of subarray Nsub . From the figure, we observe
proposed WMMSE method for the case of multiple users, that the achievable rates increase along with the SNR value.
we assume the DFRC system serve U = 3 users. We Moreover, it is interesting to note that, in low SNR region,

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 CHENG et al.: HYBRID BEAMFORMING FOR MULTI-CARRIER DFRC SYSTEM 1013

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in this work we assume,

for simplicity, that the joint design can be perfectly performed
at the transmitter side, without the consideration of feedback
of the intermediate results between the transmitter and users.
In fact, the realization of feedback of the intermediate results
in practice is still an open problem under the proposed archi-
tecture. A possible way is that we first establish a preliminary
communication link by setting a pre-defined transmit beam-
former and the receiver uses MMSE solution, or by decoupling
the transmitter and receiver designs (see, for example, [52]).
Then, we perform the joint design at the transmitter side and
feed back the designed beamformers to users. Nevertheless,
this issue deserves careful consideration and investigation in
the future work.
Fig. 10. The beampattern behaviors of the designed transmit beamformer
with ε = 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0.
A PPENDIX A
P ROOF OF P ROPOSITION 1
the achievable rates of different Nsub are roughly same, this Consider a general function of φ, as
suggests that there is no need to implement more digital chan- 
nels in low SNR region, and the cost can be reduced. While a1 + 2 e j φ b1 a + e j φ b1 + e −j φ b1∗
y(φ) =   = 1 (56)
as the input SNR increases, the performance improvement by a2 + 2 e j φ b2 a2 + e j φ b2 + e −j φ b2∗
increasing Nsub will be more and more remarkable.
Fig. 9 illustrates the achievable rates of the proposed where a1 , a2 are real values and b1 , b2 are complex values.
WMMSE method for different numbers of subarray, we The minimums and maximums of y(φ) can be obtained by
assume the input SNR is 0 dB. The results provides a similar the first-order optimal condition, as
 
phenomenon to Fig. 4. j e j φ b − j e −j φ b ∗ a + e j φ b + e −j φ b ∗
∂y(φ) 1 1 2 2 2
Finally, Fig. 10 displays the transmit beampattern behaviors =  2
of the designed hybrid beamformer and similar conclusion to ∂φ a2 + e −j φ j
b2 + e b2φ ∗
Fig. 6 can be drawn, and the MSR values of the four ε =  
j e j φ b2 − j e −j φ b2∗ a1 + e −j φ b1 + e j φ b1∗
0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 are 18.66 dB, 16.57 dB, 8.558 dB, 0.07 dB,
−  2
respectively. a2 + e j φ b2 + e −j φ b2∗
=0 (57)

VI. C ONCLUSION With some manipulations, it can be derived that (57) equals to

In this paper, the problem of hybrid beamforming design for  γe j φ = (γ) cos(φ) + (γ) sin(φ) = ξ (58)
a DFRC system with subarray architecture has been addressed.
To deal with the nonconvex formulated problem, we have where γ = a2 b1 − a1 1b2 and ξ = 2(b1∗ b2 ). Then, Eq. (58)
developed an alternating optimization algorithm based on can be further written as
the ADMM framework and a “two-stage” method with the
|γ| sin(φ + ϑ) = ξ (59)
WMMSE approach for single-user and multi-user scenarios,
respectively. The performances of proposed methods in terms where
of the achievable rate value and transmit beampattern behavior ⎧ 
⎨ arcsin (γ) , (γ) ≥ 0
are assessed by numerical simulations. The simulation results |γ| 
ϑ= (γ)
show that: ⎩ π − arcsin , otherwise
|γ|
• For single-user scenario, the proposed method achieves
better rate than the “two-stage” method. As the similar- It is obvious that problem (59) has two solutions over
ity increases, the achievable rate will become better, but (0, 2π) as
the transmit beampattern behavior will be worse. This  
ξ
suggests that a suitable trade-off between the communi- φ1 = −ϑ + arcsin (60a)
|γ|
cation rate and radar beampattern property can be made  
ξ
in practice. φ2 = π − ϑ − arcsin (60b)
• For multi-user scenario, we note that in low SNR region,
|γ|
the achievable rates of different Nsub are roughly the Then, we can obtain the optimal φ as
same. This indicates that it is less critical to implement 
φ1 , κ(φ1 ) ≤ κ(φ2 )
more digital channels in low SNR region. However, as φ = (61)
φ2 , κ(φ1 ) > κ(φ2 )
the input SNR increases, the performance improvement
by adding Nsub will be greater. This proof is completed.

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 1014 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, VOL. 7, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2021

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