DME interference mitigation for LDACS1 based on decision-directed noise estimation

L-band digital aeronautical communication system type 1 (LDACS1), a broadband system based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is the most promising candidate for the future air-to-ground (A/G) communications. LDACS1 is operating as an inlay system and limited to the 500 kHz spectral gap between the two adjacent distance measuring equipment (DME) channels of bandwidth 1 MHz. In this paper, a decision directed noise estimation (DDNE) approach to mitigating the pulsed interference from DME for LDACS1 system is proposed. The proposed method removes the effect of inter-carrier interference (ICI) which is a major problem with the conventional pulse blanking method for LDACS1 system. The simulation results highlight the impact of DME interference onto the LDACS1 system and show the performance improvement of the proposed method compared to conventional interference mitigation methods in terms of bit error rate (BER).