A Unified Performance Framework for Integrated Sensing-Communications
based on KL-Divergence
Abstract
The need for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) services has
significantly increased in the last few years. This integration imposes
serious challenges such as the joint system design, resource allocation,
optimization and analysis. Since sensing and telecommunication systems
have different approaches for performance evaluation, introducing a
unified performance measure which provides a perception about the
quality of sensing and telecommunication is very beneficial. To this
end, this paper provides performance analysis for ISAC systems based on
the information theoretical framework of Kullback-Leibler divergence
(KLD). The considered system model consists of a
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) base-station (BS) providing ISAC
services to multiple communication user equipments (CUEs) and a number
of targets (or sensing-served users). The KLD framework allows for a
unified evaluation of the error rate performance of CUEs, and the
detection performance of the targets. The relation between the detection
capability for the targets and error rate of CUEs on one hand, and the
proposed KLD on the other hand is illustrated analytically. Theoretical
results corroborated by simulations show that the derived KLD is very
accurate and can perfectly characterize both subsystems, namely the
communication and radar subsystems.