Statistical Modeling of Wireless Communications Interference and Its Effects on Adaptive-Threshold Radar Detection

Recent changes in U.S. policy call for spectrum sharing between radar and wireless communications. In order to inform choices of protection criteria for a radar sharing spectrum with communications systems, this paper models communications interference and its effects on a cell-averaging adaptive-threshold radar detector. First, we propose a statistical model for communications interference based on existing models and original simulations, and we find support for both Gaussian and non-Gaussian models, depending on the application. Then, we assess the impact of communications interference on radar detection. Our results suggest that when interference is not well modeled as white Gaussian noise, mean interference-to-noise ratio (INR) is not sufficient to characterize interference effects on radar, and additional interference characteristics such as kurtosis/impulsiveness and coherence time can significantly impact radar performance. We also find degradation in radar performance in relatively low-INR Gaussian interference (e.g., about -6 to -2 dB mean INR at the output of the matched filter).