In band interference to radar for swerling targets

Recently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has opened the access to radar frequency bands to other users. Widening of this access resulted in a review of the ITU recommendation and tightening of the requirements of protection criteria for radar performance in the presence of unintentional emissions. As a result ITU has recommended the maximum allowable level of interference to noise ratio of -10 dB, for maritime, radionavigation radars, and -6 dB for meteorological radars. In this paper, the effects of Gaussian and non-Gaussian interference on probability of detection were investigated. A series of theoretical calculations for various Swerling target models for Gaussian noise and non-Gaussian noise interference confirmed that the maximum levels of I/N allowed by the ITU recommendations cause the degradation of P_d=0.8 by 2.7% for Swerling V models. For other Swerling target models, the degradation is smaller than for Swerling V. These calculations confirmed that I/N levels recommended by ITU are sufficient to protect radars from unintentional interference.