On the Performance of Uplink ISAC Systems

Abstract: This letter analyzes the performance of uplink integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems where communication users (CUs) and radar targets (RTs) share the same frequency band. A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) protocol is adopted in the communication procedure of the ISAC system. Novel expressions are derived to characterize the outage probability, ergodic communication rate, and sensing rate. Besides, the diversity order and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slope are unveiled to gain further insights. It is found that when achieving the same communication rate, the ISAC system enjoys a higher sensing rate than the conventional frequency-division sensing and communications (FDSAC) system where CUs and RTs share isolated bands. All the results are validated by numerical simulations and are in excellent agreement.