Examination of a simple pulse-blanking technique for radio frequency interference mitigation

Radiometry at L band can be adversely impacted by radio frequency interference (RFI) due to the presence of numerous sources, especially pulsed RFI from radars operating below 1400 MHz. RFI mitigation is very important to deal with this problem. A simple strategy for reducing pulsed RFI, termed “asynchronous pulse blanking” (APB), has been implemented in a digital receiver developed at Ohio State University. This paper presents results from a simulation of the APB algorithm. Several aspects of algorithm use and performance are reported, including means for choosing the algorithm's parameters and the robustness of the method in a realistic RFI environment. Effects of the blanking process on the final output are also examined.