Doppler-Resilient Design of CAZAC Sequences for mmWave/THz Sensing Applications

Abstract: Ultra-high-resolution target sensing has emerged as a key enabler for various cutting-edge applications, which can be realized by utilizing the millimeter wave/terahertz frequencies. However, the extremely high operating frequency inevitably leads to significant Doppler shift effects, especially for high-mobility applications, causing the degradation of sensing performance with high false alarm rate. To this end, this paper proposes a parameter design methodology of the well-known constant amplitude zero auto correlation (CAZAC) sequences, which aims at enhancing their resilience to Doppler shifts. Specifically, we suppress the sidelobes incurred by Doppler shifts for the peak-to-sidelobe ratio (PSLR) improvement within the range of interest (RoI) of the radar range profile. The Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequence, as a representative member in the CAZAC family, is firstly considered. The impacts of its root index on range sidelobes are investigated based on number theory. For an arbitrary-length ZC sequence, a feasible range of the root index is derived to satisfy the requirement of PSLR within the scope of RoI. Furthermore, these design guidelines are extended to a general form of CAZAC sequences, where a low-complexity heuristic algorithm is developed for PSLR improvement. Simulation results demonstrate that under severe Doppler shifts, our proposed methodology could enhance the sensing performance by lowering the false alarm rate while maintaining the same detection rate, compared with its classical counterpart.