INR Walls: Performance Limits in RFI Detection

Radio frequency interference (RFI) is a manifestation of several interference instances that are caused by either intentional or unintentional interferes. Unless efficiently mitigated, RFI can evoke several system performance losses in various radio frequency (RF) operating systems. As a preliminary step of mitigating RFI, a number of RFI detectors have been proposed to date. These existing RFI detectors assume Gaussian noise with certain power despite the fact that it is impossible to know parameters to infinite precision. In this respect, the impact of noise power uncertainty on the existing RFI detectors needs to be investigated. Toward this end, this paper showcases the existence of performance limits-in a power-based RFI detector- dubbed INR walls. Interference-to-noise ratio (INR) walls are the maximum INRs below which an RFI detector cannot satisfy the target error probabilities, regardless of the number of intercepted samples. Simulations validate the derived INR walls which implicate the existence of fundamental RFI detection limits.