On the Impact of Phase Noise on Monostatic Sensing in OFDM ISAC Systems

Phase noise (PN) can become a major bottleneck for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems towards 6G wireless networks. In this paper, we consider an OFDM ISAC system with oscillator imperfections and investigate the impact of PN on monostatic sensing performance by performing a misspecified Cramér-Rao bound (MCRB) analysis. Simulations are carried out under a wide variety of operating conditions with regard to SNR, oscillator type (free-running oscillators (FROs) and phase-locked loops (PLLs)), 3-dB bandwidth of the oscillator spectrum, PLL loop bandwidth and target range. The results provide valuable insights on when PN leads to a significant degradation in range and/or velocity accuracy, establishing important guidelines for hardware and algorithm design in 6G ISAC systems.