Enhanced Channel Estimation for OTFS-Assisted ISAC in Vehicular Networks: A Deep Learning Approach

This paper explores an orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS)-assisted integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system in vehicular networks. We present a deep learning (DL)-based framework for the OTFS-assisted ISAC system, leveraging the advantages offered by the Delay-Doppler representation of the time-variant channel. The communication channel matrix is utilized within the framework to infer motion parameters, thereby enabling the establishment of an effective transmission protocol. Therefore, it is crucial to design a channel estimation method that simultaneously fulfills both sensing and communication performance requirements. To this end, a DL-based channel estimation approach is designed to obtain accurate channel state information (CSI), due to the powerful capability of neural networks [1]. Specifically, we model the channel estimation as a denoising problem from the embedded pilot scheme and employ a self-adaptive threshold submodule to eliminate irrelevant features. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that our proposed method can obtain accurate CSI with the available sensing performance.