Multifunctional Transceiver for Future Intelligent Transportation Systems

A multifunctional transceiver for future intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) is proposed and presented in this paper. The transceiver has two operation modes, namely, radar (sensing) mode and radio (communication) mode, which are realized within a single hardware platform. In the proposed transceiver architecture, a special modulation scheme is devised in which the radar mode and radio mode are arranged in different time slots. In the radar cycle, a trapezoidal frequency-modulation continuous-wave modulation scheme is adopted. The radio cycle following the radar cycle is simply an additional constant-frequency period of the transmitted signal, which can be used as a constant carrier for data transmission. To prove and demonstrate the functionality of the proposed transceiver system, an experimental prototype was designed and constructed in this study for 5.9-GHz dedicated short-range communication system applications. Both system simulation and measurement results show very good performances. This multifunctional transceiver system has demonstrated a number of advantages and features such as low cost, low complexity, and versatile functionality, which promises to play an important role in the development of future ITSs and other similar systems.