Impact of PA Nonlinearities on AFDM Sensing: A Matched Filtering Perspective

Abstract

Affine Frequency Division Multiplexing (AFDM) is a promising waveform for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) due to its Doppler resilience. However, such waveforms exhibit a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), and they require highly linear Power Amplifiers (PAs), which conflicts with ISAC requirements, where high transmit power for sensing is always beneficial. This paper investigates the impact of PA nonlinearities on the sensing performance of AFDM. Using the Bussgang decomposition of the nonlinearly amplified AFDM signal, we analyze the delay-Doppler ambiguity function for the sensing matched filtering and show that AFDM's sidelobes remain nearly unaffected. Simulation results confirm that AFDM outperforms OFDM in target detection under high Doppler and nonlinear amplification, highlighting its suitability for the sensing task.

The manuscript was previously deposited in HAL (hal-05573928). Accepted for presentation at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC)