JAMMING CANCELER USING INTERPOLATED FFT

Hiroomi Hikawa Vijay K . Jain

Department of Electrical Engineering,

University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620.

ABSTRACT
In this paper, a new jamming cancelation system is described.
It uses IpFFT to estimate the amplitude, frequency and phase of the
Fast Fourier transform (FFT) plays an important role in the
jamming signal, and these parameters are used to generate a replica of
analysis and implementation of digital signal processing algorithms.
the jamming signal. The cancelation is then performed by subtracting
A particularly interesting practical application is anti-jamming fre-
the replica from the sampled data in time domain.
quency filtering wherein the frequency domain filter is used on data
consisting of a wide-band low intensity signal corrupted with narrow- The high accuracy measurements through IpFFT are well suited
band high intensity interference (jamming signal). However such a for this purpose. For these calculations, correct frequency domain in-
frequency domain filter requires a fine frequency resolution, hence long formation for the jamming signal is needed. However, the information
frames, to accurately estimate the frequency of the jamming signal. signal and the jamming signal affect each other, so that the FFT data
is usually corrupted by the information signal. To remove the effect
To achieve improved performance, which simultaneously requires
of the information signal, various methods are proposed here. These
shorter frame lengths, we propose a new jamming cancelation sys-
methods use averaging technique and enhance the parameters of the
tem. It uses the IpFFT (Interpolated FFT) algorithm, which involves
jamming signal.
simple calculations beyond the usual FFT. In this system, IpFFT is
used to estimate the parameters of the jamming signal, frequency,
amplitude and phase, and the cancellation is performed in time do- 2 THEORY FFT
OF INTERPOLATED
main. In order for the IpFFT to perform correctly, accurate frequency
domain information about the jamming signal is required. However, Consider the sampled signal
FFT information around the jamming frequency may be warped by M
the information signal itself, which makes it difficult to estimate the s(nT) = sm(nT)
m=l
parameters of the jamming signal. To remove the effect of the infor-
mation signal on the jamming signal, various methods are proposed M
here. = EA,sin(2~f,nT+$.~) n = 0 , 1 ....,N - 1
The performance of the proposed system is verified by computer m=l
simulation, which demonstrate the high performance of the system.
Indeed, a comparison with the conventional frequency domain filter The frequency resolution of the FFT with N samples is given by
shows that our system has an 8 to 10 dB better jamming cancelation 1
capability than the FFT canceler. fo = E'

The frequencies contained in the sampled signal can be expressed

1 INTRODUCTION as

The fast Fourier transform (FFT) plays an important role in anal-

ysis, design and implementation of digital signal processing algorithm
and systems [2]. However, it is well known that these methods also where, I , are distinct integers and 6, are suitable fractions between
produce slightly erroneous results [4] due to the well-known spill effect zero and one. The sampled time domain sequence s(nT) is trans-
despite the use of tapered-window multipliers [5],[6].Therefore, when formed to a frequency domain sequence S(k)by FFT. By using in-
a high degree of accuracy is desired, the conventional FFT method terpolation method, frequencies, amplitudes and phases of a signal
proves to be unsatisfactory. When the underlying signal consists of a can be measured with higher accuracies than those obtained by the
sum of a few sinusoids, high accuracy measurements on a signal can normal FFT algorithm.
be achieved by using interpolated FFT (IpFFT) algorithm [l]. This In order to make the problem simpler, we assume M = 1. By
algorithm requires simple calculations beyond the usual FFT of the setting M = 1 in ( l ) ,the DFT of s(nT) is found to be
signal. By using IpFFT, the amplitude, frequency and phase of the
underlying sinusoids can be calculated with high accuracy.
A particularly interesting and highly practical application of FFT
is anti-jamming frequency domain filtering [3]. The received signal
typically consists of a wide band low intensity information signal cor-
rupted by a high intensity CW interference (jamming signal). The fre-
quency domain filter operates by computing the spectrum of the input where
signal, weighting the spectrum and computing an inverse transform
of the weighted spectrum. Therefore, in the conventional frequency X=1+6
domain filter, a fine frequency resolution is necessary to estimate the
frequency of the jamming signal. a = T ( N - 1)/N

When the values 1 and 1 + 1 are known beforehand, the frequency f

This research was supported by DARPA Grant No. MDA 972-88-5-
of the signal is estimated from (4).
1006

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 . f = ( I + 6 )1~
(5)
loot
where

Furthermore, the amplitude A and phase 4 of the signal are given

20 c /I
II
by 0
I 1 I
20 40 60 80 100
Frequency
4(I) = Phase(S(1)) - a6 + s / 2 (7)
Figure 2: Relation between each signals (6 = 0.0).
When I S(Z) S(I+ 1) I, following equations are recommended:

2 4 1 - 6 ) I S(I + 1) I
A(I + 1) = - N sin s(1- 6 ) ’

4(I+ 1) = Phase{S(I + I)} - a(6 - 1) + a/2. (9)

By performing these calculations beyond the FFT of the signal,

accurate amplitude, frequency and phase performing of the signal are
obtained .
20
3 TO JAMMING
APPLICATION CANCELLATION
0
3.1 Basic Operation of The System
20 40 60 BO 100
Configuration of the proposed jamming cancelation system is Frequency
shown in Fig. 1. The input signal consists of the information signal
corrupted by the jamming signal: Figure 3: Relation between each signals (6 = 0.5).

z(t) = v ( t ) + s(t) FFT;

= ~ ( t+)A sin(2sft + 4)
where, where, v ( t ) denotes the information signal, and s ( t ) denotes the
CW jamming signal. As assumed in the previous section, s ( t ) contains Fig. 2 and 3 show the relation among each signals X ( k ) , V ( t )and
a single frequency component. At first, sampled time domain data S(k).The purpose of the IpFFT is to find the amplitude, frequency
r(nT) is transformed to frequency domain data X ( k ) by the usual and phase of s ( t ) from X ( k ) . These parameters are used to generate
the replica of the jamming signal in time domain. The cancelation of
the jamming signal is performed by subtracting this replica from the
Input (Information + Jamming signal) incoming sampled signal.
Jl To use the IpFFT algorithm, the frequency indices 1 and 1 1 of +
the FFT bin enclosing the jamming signal must be detected. The
AID jamming signal is assumed to have a large amplitude, so that the
FFT
frequency position I is easily found. The canceler finds the position
1 of the jamming signal by searching for the largest magnitude in the
+ J frequency domain data.
Frame averaging Franie averaging
X ( k ) (coarse) X,(k) (fine) In order to perform the IpFFT correctly, accurate frequency do-
main data of the jamming signal is required. However, the frequency
I domain data is corrupted by the information signal due to spectral
V
overlap. To remove the effect of the information signal, various meth-
ods are proposed here.
To estimate the frequency correctly, a combination of frame av-
eraging and a scheme which predicts the jamming signal component
from the neighboring frequency domain data, are proposed. Moreover,
to enhance the phase and amplitude informations, certain averaging
I methods are employed.
&
Subtract output 3.2 Frequency Estimation

To calculate the jamming frequency from (5), the estimates of the

Figure 1: Block diagram of the system. magnitudes I S(I) I and I S(1+1) I must be accurate. These magnitude

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 data must be estimated from the frequency domain data X ( k ) . For
this estimation, we assume that the parameters of the jamming signal
do not change. Then, simple averaging is useful to make frequency
domain data smooth. The average of the each magnitude data in
frequency domain is taken. The averaged data of frequency index k
in the i - t h frame is calculated as follows;
Therefore, estimates of the s i ( / ) and Ti(/ + 1) are obtained as
[S?i(k)]' = a I Xi(k) 1' +(1- a)[Ti-l(k)]' (12)

where, 0.0 < a < 1.0. Here, Ifi(k) denotes the smoothed magnitude
at the k - t h index in the i - t h frame.
From (11) we have

I Xi(k) 12=1 Si(k) I' + I K(k) 1' +2 I Si(k) 11 K(k) I COS$ (13)

where, qb is a phase angle between Si(k) and K ( k ) . As (12) is taking

These estimated jamming frequency components Si(/), $ ( I 1) +
can be used in (5) to calculate frequency of the jamming signal. In
an average of I Xi(k) 12, following equation is easily obtained, this way, the effect of the information signal can be predicted from
the neighboring frequency domain data.
lim Ei(k)]'
i-rar = E[Xi(k)]' (14)
3.3 Amplitude Estimation
= E I Si(k) l2 +E I K(k) 1' +2E 1 Si(k)11 K(k) I COS$
The magnitude data obtained from FFT changes every frame as
As the two signals s ( l ) and v ( t ) are uncorrelated with each other, the the information signal changes. Therefore, the amplitude calculated
expected value of the last term in (14) is zero; by interpolation changes every frame, which makes the performance
of the system worse. To avoid this, frame averaging is considered
E I Si(k) 11 K ( k ) I COS$ = 0. (15) to be useful. However, Ifi(k) can not be used for this purpose, as
the weight a is set to be a very small value, which means that it
Therefore, takes long time to converge. Therefore, a coarse averaging is used to
improve the convergence of the amplitude estimate in a short time.
The coarse averaging is achieved by

where Xi(k) = P I xi(k)I +(I -P)Xi-l(k) (23)

where, a << P < 1.0. The amplitude of the jamming signal is calcu-
+
lated by substituting X i ( [ ) and X i ( l 1) for I S(1) I and 1 S(I i-
1) I
in (5).
As shown in (6) and (8), the amplitude of the jamming signal can
This averaging makes the magnitude data in frequency domain be calculated with either Xi([) or X i ( l -p 1). However, it is recom-
smooth, but it still contains the components of the information signal. mended to use the larger of the two for greater reliability. In case
To obtain accurate frequency information, v i ( k ) must be eliminated the jamming frequency lies in the middle of the frequency bins, which
from Ti(k). means that 6 is around 0.5, either equation can be used.
As the jamming signal has a narrow-band high intensity frequency Therefore, to enhance the amplitude, the final amplitude A is ob-
component and owing to the averaging, the frequency domain data of tained by adaptively averaging the two amplitudes, A ( [ )and A([+1)
the information signal is considered to be smooth. Therefore, the obtained from (6) and (8), respectively.
following relation can be assumed to be hold (very approximately).
+
A = 7 4 1 ) (1 - y)A(l + 1) (24)
where
where, Y is a small integer. Fig. 2 and 3 show that as 6 approaches to 0.5(6/0.5)' if 6 < 0.5
0.5, the jamming frequency with big amplitude spread wider around
1. Hence a larger number must be selected for U when 6 is close to
Y= {1 - 0.5(6/0.5)' if 6 2 0.5

0.5. Conversely, smaller number must be selected when 6 is close to 0 The weighing ratio y is adaptively changed as a function of 6.
+
or 1.0 because a smaller v makes I K(I v) I to be closer to I K ( I ) I.
In the proposed system, the value of U is determined by
3.4 Phase Estimation

U={
< 108 > if 8 < 0.5 As the frequency data X(I) and X(I+ 1) are masked by the infor-
< lO(1 - 8) > if 8 2 0.5 mation signal, it is difficult to eliminate the effect of the information
signal to the phase information. Similar to the amplitude estimation,
where < X >= integer part of X , and
an adaptive averaging of 4(I) and 4(l+ 1.) is employed to enhance the
phase information. The adaptive averaglng is performed as follows:

4 = 74N + (1 - Y)4(1 + 1) (25)

From (16) and (17), we obtain Note that the same y as used for the adaptive averaging for amplitude
is used here.
(zi(I)]' = Vi(I)]' + ['Vi(I)]2 = [Ti(l)]Z+ [T;(I+ 41' (19) Furthermore, to make the phase information more reliable, a phase
averaging is used. The average of the phase is taken in each frame.
Hence, The phase of the i - t h frame can be predicted from the previous

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 1.0

?0.8
2
+4
0.6
4=I
0.4 I -I
% -
s 0.2 Jamming frequency a = 0.01 j? = 0.3
fJam * N = 50.2 JSR = 5.0 [dB]
0 2 0 - I . , l . I . ~ .
-
*

0 50 100 150 200 250 31 0 100 200 300 400 500

Frequency Frame
(A)
Figure 4: Spectrum of the information signal.

frame’s phase and 6:

$i = 4i-1 +2 ~ 6 (26)

Now, the predicted phase & is used to determine the final phase with
current phase information 4rP obtained from IpFFT. When 6 is close
to 0 or 1, the reliability of ~ $ increases
1~ and the averaging with 6
becomes unnecessary. In the initial condition, 6 is not correct, which
6 4
means that $ is not accurate and can not be used. To detect if
is correct or not, the difference between 4 and 4rp is checked, and
if the difference is small, the averaging is performed. The following
U
I .
Jamming frequency a = 0.01
fJam * N = 50.2
, , ,
JSR = 5.0 [dB]
. , . , . ,
i
adaptive averaging is used to determine the final phase:
0 100 200 300 400 500
Frame
(27) (B)
Figure 5: Jamming cancelation (A) IpFFT canceler (B) FFT can-
where
celer.
if 5 < 0.5
’={ f-6 if 6 2 0 . 5 of the distortion improvement when the jamming frequency is changed
in short range. It is seen that the improvement performance of FFT
4 SIMULATION
RESULTS canceler depends on the position of the jamming frequency and the
performance of the IpFFT canceler is better than FFT canceler even
4.1 Cancellation Performance when the jamming frequency lies on the frequency index of the FFT.
The performance of the two systems is compared in Fig. 7 when
In this section, the performance of the proposed system is verified the jamming frequency is changed over a wide range. With Fig. 4, it
by computer simulations and is compared with the FFT frequency is clarified that the degree of cancelation in both systems increases as
domain filter. For a fair comparison, frame averaging is used also in the magnitude of the information signal decreases.
the FFT canceler. In the simulation experiments the frame length is
Fig. 8 shows the relation between jamming-to-signal ratio (JSR)
taken to be N = 512 both for the IpFFT canceler as well as for the and the performance improvement. As in Fig. 7, the improvement
conventional F F T canceler. Furthermore, the frames are taken to be performance increases as the contrast in the magnitudes of informa,
non-overlapping. One reason for this choice is that the University of tion signal and jamming signal increases. This is of course expected.
South Florida is designing an 8-point FFT wafer [7] which is intended
to be the workhorse for a 512-point FFT system. This system design Through these simulations, it is shown that the proposed system
is also underway. In Fig. 4, the spectrum of the information signal has improved capability compared to the conventional FFT canceler.
,is shown. This signal is generated by filtering white Gaussian noise
through a filter 4.2 Learning Performance

The proposed system uses frame averaging to enhance the infor-

1
H(z)=
+
1- 1 . 4 ~ 0~ . 8 ~ ~
In Fig. 5, a comparison of the performance of the two jamming
cancelation systems is shown. It is found that the IpFFT canceler
has better performance. However, the variance in improvement of
the IpFFT canceler is greater than that of FFT canceler, because
the IpFFT is easily affected by the information signal. In spite of the
averaging steps employed, the distortion improvement value converges
quickly (Fig. 5A), because the magnitude data converges quickly due
to coarse averaging.
Next, the relation between jamming frequency and the perfor-
mance is considered. Fig. 6 depicts the mean and standard deviation
mation on the jamming signal. Therefore it takes the system some
time to learn. In this section, we consider the learning performance
of the system. Table 1 shows the relation between the user selected
parameter a,distortion improvement and learning time ( T z d ~ ) The
.
learning time is defined as a number of frames required for the distor-
tion improvement to attain the stabilized average improvement value
minus 3dB. This table shows that a does not affect the learning time,
but a smaller value of a yields better cancelation performance. In
Table 2, the relation between the user selectable parameter p and
the system performance is shown. This table shows that the learn-
ing time depends critically on @. A larger value of ,O improves the
learning behavior, but a smaller value of p yields better cancelation.

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 U a 1 Distortion improvement (dB) 1 T&B 0
73451
IpFFT canceler JSR = 5.0[dB]
FFT canceler a = 0.01 b,' = 0.3

U%-E
3 10

50.0 50.2 50.4 50.6 50.8 51.0

Table 1: a vs. cancelation performance

0 p
( p = 0.3).

11 Distortion improvement (dB) I ~ 3 d B1

Jamming Frequency
Figure 6: Distortion improvement vs. frequency (short range).

o IpFFT canceler
FFT canceler
JSR = 5.0[dB]
a = 0.01 ,8 = 0.3
6 = 0.1
T
1 Table 2: p vs. cancelation performance (a= 0.01).

of the CW jamming signal. IpFFT is used to estimate the frequency,

f amplitude and phase of the jamming signal, and the cancelation of

II I I 4 the jamming signal is done in the time domain. The high accuracy
characteristics of the IpFFT are well suited for this purpose.
For the IpFFT to function correctly, reliable FFT of the jamming
signal is needed. However, the frequency domain information around
the jamming frequency is "masked" by the information signal. To
? eliminate the effect of the information signal on the jamming signal, a
L combination of frame averaging and phase enhancement is employed.
The average of the each frame in frequency domain is taken to make
it smooth, then the effect of the data signal is predicted from the
0 25 50 75 100 125 neighboring frequency domain data of the jamming frequency. The
Jamming Frequency averaging on the phase and amplitude are done for enhanced estima
tion.
Figure 7: Distortion improvement vs. frequency (wide range). The performance of the proposed system is verified by computer
simulation, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the system. In-
deed, comparison with the conventional frequency domain filter shows
o IpFFT canceler a = 0.01 ,8 = 0.3 that the new system has a better jamming cancelation capability by
FFT canceler fJam * N = 50.1
approximately 8dB.

REFERENCES

[l] V. K. Jain, W. L. Collins and D. C. Davis, 'High-accuracy analog

measurements via interpolated FFT,' IEEE Trans. Instrumenta-

?Ii
tion and Measurement., Vol. IM-28, No.2, June 1979.
[2] A. V. Oppenheim and R. W. Schafer, Digital Signal Processing.
8
U L Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1975.
-I [3] E. Swartzlander, VLSI Signal Processing Systems. Kluwer Aca-
demic, 1986.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
JSR in dB [4] D. C. Rife and. G. A. Vincent, 'Use of the discrete Fourier trans-
form in the measurement of frequencies and level of tones,' Bell
Figure 8: Distortion improvement vs. JSR. Syst Tech. J., Vol.49, pp197-228, February 1970.

[5] I. Koval and G. gara, 'Digital MF receiver using discrete Fourier

transform,' IEEE Trans. Commun., Vol. COM-21, pp. 1331-1335,
The requirements for quick learning and high performance therefore, Dec. 1978.
conflict with each other. We find p = 0.3 to be a good compromise
for the information signal spectrum used, and for N = 512.
[6] F. J . Harris, 'On the use of windows for harmonic analysis with
the discrete Fourer transform,' Proc IEEE, vo1.66, pp.51-83, Jan.
1978.
5 CONCLUSIONS
[7] V. K. Jain, H. A. Nienhaus, D. L. Landis, S. A. Ar-Arian, and C.
A new jamming cancelation system has been described. The sys- E. Alvarez, 'Wafer scale architecture for an FFT processor,' Proc.
tem uses IpFFT algorithm, which offers high accuracy measurement Int. Symp. on Circuits and Systems, 1989.

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