Transmission Mask Analysis for Range-Doppler Sensing in Half-Duplex ISAC

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the periodic transmission masks for MASked Modulation (MASM) in half-duplex integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), and derive their closed-form expected range-Doppler response $\mathbb{E}\{r(k,l,\hat{I}½)\}$. We show that range sidelobes ($k\ne l$) are Doppler-invariant, extending the range-sidelobe optimality to the 2-D setting. For the range mainlobe ($k=l$), periodic masking yields sparse Doppler sidelobes: Cyclic difference sets (CDSs) (in particular Singer CDSs) are minimax-optimal in a moderately dynamic regime, while in a highly dynamic regime the Doppler-sidelobe energy is a concave function of the mask autocorrelation, revealing an inevitable tradeoff with mainlobe fluctuation.

8 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE ISIT 2026