English

CisLunarSense: Opportunistic ISAC for Debris Detection at the Lunar Gateway

Signal Processing 2026-04-14 v1

Abstract

We propose CisLunarSense, an opportunistic integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework that exploits the Lunar Gateway's Ka-band relay for monostatic debris detection, addressing the absence of cislunar space situational awareness infrastructure beyond the reach of ground-based radars. Using NASA/ESA-documented system parameters with author-selected sensing settings and a CR3BP-based 9:2 near-rectilinear halo orbit model, we derive the orbit-phase-dependent Cram\'{e}r--Rao bound under OFDM inter-carrier interference, quantify a 36~dB cislunar sensing advantage over a ground-based Ka-band reference, and design a velocity-adaptive processor with mode switching at 337~m/s. Gateway operational debris (vrel<50v_\mathrm{rel} < 50~m/s) is detectable within 700~km with over 30~minutes of warning; external threats (vrelv_\mathrm{rel} up to 500~m/s) remain detectable within 400--630~km. An orbit-phase-adaptive allocation reduces the sensing duty cycle from 60\% to 19\%, increasing relay throughput from 44 to 90~Mbps. A closed-form sensing outage probability for KK-CPI non-coherent integration under Swerling~I fluctuation shows that the 10\%-outage detection range reaches 91\% of the deterministic maximum at the nominal operating point K=16K = 16.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.10807,
  title  = {CisLunarSense: Opportunistic ISAC for Debris Detection at the Lunar Gateway},
  author = {Haofan Dong and Ozgur B. Akan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.10807},
  year   = {2026}
}