ITU-R SG8 WP8B Radar Seminar :

Factors to consider for Intersystem EMC (continued)

Thierry JURAND
Geneva, September 24th 2005

Air Systems Division

 Agenda

Operational Requirements & Frequency Requirements

The long way on characterisation from interference to

operational significance

Some conclusive propositions

1 Air Systems Division

 Radar and Frequency
 Radar Operational Requirements …..
 A summary of civil radar missions:
 Detection
 Location
 Resolution
 Tracking
 Military radar may have additional requirements:
 Classification
 Recognition
 Missile Communications
 Electronic Protection

 …Lead to Radar Spectral requirements

 Choice of frequency band
 Choice of antenna+transmitted power
 Instantaneous bandwidth
 Frequency diversity, eventually agility
 Compatibility with other radar & EMC requirements

Allocated Radar Frequency is necessary

2 Air Systems Division
 Example : ATC radar

Operational requirement : exhaustive,

continuous, reliable coverage for aircraft
separation of 3, 5 or 10 MN

"En-route" Primary Radar “Approach” Primary Radar

Range longer than 150 MN Range : from 0,5 MN to 60, 80 or 100 MN
Source : Eurocontrol

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 Example : ATC radar

 Operational Requirements
 Distance resolution < 150 m ; distance accuracy < 80 m
 Angular resolution < 1,5° ou 2,3° ; Angular accuracy < 0,15°
 Speed coverage : 40 à 800 knots (75 -1500km/h)
 Information renewal rate : 5 à 6 rpm class or 12 à 15 rpm class

 Spectral Requirements
 L-band, 1 215-1 350 MHz or S-band, 2 700-2 900 MHz
 Instantaneous bandwidth = 1 MHz
 Frequency diversity : at least 2 channels separated by several tens
MHz (bande S > 35 MHz)
 Operating compatibility with other radar (9 primary radar in France,
excl. neighbouring countries)
 Compliance to emission control requirements (ITU, NTIA, MIL-STD)
Source : Eurocontrol

4 Air Systems Division

 The long way on characterisation
from interference to operational
significance

Air Systems Division

 Interference : some operational considerations

Cell Phone & FM radio in your car … Revisited

 Bips on your FM while your cell phone communicates with a
base station
 Hey, I am undergoing interference
 ==> Interference detection
 It violates an established or implicit protection criterion
 I may miss a ± long portion of a word or of a tune & I know why
 ==> Interference measurement & identification (even if subjective)
 Is is not a harmful interference
 I have enough information & awareness to go on listening my radio
 ==> As an informed operator, I am a robust processor to get along
even with the obvious interference
 ==> My operational degradation is bearable in confidence

What about radar ?

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 Way from interference to operational significance

Radar functional diagram

Band Pass
Filter
Band Pass
Filter
High
Power
Interference :
Amplifier
Digital
Waveform I/N = f(d,q,t,……)
Generator

Harmonics
Filter

Beamformer

Antenna
First Agile
Digital Clock Local Dup.
Local
Band Pass Oscillator
Oscillator
Filter

LNA
I A
D
C
Q Second IF First IF RF Band
Band Pass Band Pass Image
Digital
Filter Filter Rejection
Phase Sensitive
Detector
Filter Operations :
Signal Processor

Range Doppler Plot

Thresholding
Processing Processing (CFAR) Extraction
Tracker Display
(DPC) (MTI/MTD)

Data Processor

I/N « considerations » ?? GAP ??

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 Interference main effects to radar

Elementary
 Blocking
 Desensitisation
 False alarm

System aspects
 Unrecoverable blinding jamming
 Loss of range & overall coverage
 Track distortion, track losses & false tracks
 Loss of accuracy

Operational significance
 What is harmful interference ?

8 Air Systems Division

 Interference : multidimensional aspects
With respect to radar, Interference is a very wide world :
 Strength dimension  I/N
 Spatial distribution I/N
 Signal structure :
 From pure frequency ………wide multi-channel spread spectrum
 Temporal distribution
 Duty cycle : ratio « on duration » over « operating duration »
 Randomness
 Temporal scale
 Ultra fast scale : few us, intra-pulse & intra pulse-repetition-interval
 Fast scale : few ms, radar burst or scan level
 Slow scale : scan to scan
 Ultra slow scale

I/N analysis addresses few of these dimensions

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 ITU intersystem EMC considerations
 ITU
 radars: primary service in radionavigation, primary or secondary in
radiolocation
 ITU radar protection
 No harmful interference when radar has precedence (e.g. primary)
 Recommendations
 No saturation of radar receivers
 Continuous noise interference : I/N < -6 dB protection criterion
 Impulsive signal interference : specific studies
 Real life in sharing cases :
 If saturation  unambiguous harmful interference
 If I/N < -6 dB : tolerated interference, ? Unambiguously ? not harmful
 In between : almost all cases under study at ITU ?
 Interference is never unambiguously continuous

Operational assessment of harmfulness is a “wide world”

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 Inter radar EMC

 Radar “share well” with each other

 directive and rotating transmissions
 pulsed transmissions,
 selective reception,
 false alarm processing
 tracking

 Recognised … within the regulatory body ….

 All the work pertaining and leading to the upgrade of radiolocation status
from secondary to primary at WRC-03

 … And operationally
 E.g. Maritime Navigation radar tests on mitigating radiolocation radar
published in ITU
 E.g Several radars in the same band on close or even the same airport

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 « Proliferating » interferers
2D fan beam radar

3D pencil beam radar

Adjacent channelRadar instantaneous

operating station bandwidth

Radar agility
bandwidth

Adjacent band Co-channel Frequency

operating station operating station distant-channel I/N for fan beam
12 Air Systems Division
 « Proliferating » interferers
Distant-channel I/N = -6dB
Adjacent-channel I/N = -18dB
Co-channel I/N = 50 dB
2D fan beam radar

In any case, operationally speaking,

unrecoverable cases : 3D pencil beam radar
* 2D radar : ± degraded, eventually
terminally
* 3D radar : ± degraded, but more
« robust »
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 10
R a p p o rt In t e rfe re n c e a B ru it s u r le s s a t e ll it e s « Discrete » interferers
0
Interference from satellite
-1 0
Constellation to ATC radar
Rapport I/N (dB)

Co-channel ratio I/N 

-2 0

 instantaneous probability of detection

-3 0
 tracking probability
-4 0
Worst case :
-5 0  10s delay in track-init = 2 scans
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
P ro b a b ilit e d e c o n s e rve r u n e p is t e c o n firm e e
Te m p s (s e c )
Ta rg e t in s t a n t a n e o u s p ro b a b ilit y o f d e t e c t io n

1
1

0.8
0.8

Probabilite de pistage
Probability of detection

0.6
0.6

0.4
0.4

0.2
0.2

0
0

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Te m p s (s e c )
Tim e (s e c )

14 Air Systems Division Source : WP8B/232 or WP8D/287 2000-3 study period

 RLAN in radar C band
 RLAN vs. Radar
 Radar in 5 250 – 5 850 MHz
 RLAN in 5 150 – 5 250 MHz + 5 470 MHz – 5 725 MHz
 Multi-channel spread spectrum “discontinuous in time” signal structure
 DFS+TPC in radar bands as mitigation techniques for sharing
 Ultra-low scale scale
 Network establishment out of established neighbouring radar frequencies
 Slow scale
 Solve a conflict with fixed frequency radar, if a solution is found
 Fast scale
 During transition periods, few radar bursts interfered with, leading to false
alarm, or with frequency agile radar
 Ultra fast scale
 Signals are in packets of duration comparable duration with radar pules
 RLAN intra-packet modulation may have “non noise” interaction with radar
pulse modulation

C-band case might become a practical case study

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 So where should one be ?

 The level of man made interference (unintentional

jamming) is only acceptable when it does not reduce the
performance of the radar below that required for fulfilling
its mission

 The link between interference characterisation to

operational significance is non universal and difficult to
establish
 Other than conservative protection criteria

 It must be decided upon by the end user in consultation

with the system designers
 Including the frequency management and regulatory process

16 Air Systems Division

 Constraints on the possibilities for sharing (1/3)

Unavoidable consequences from operational requirements :

 Radar power requirements
 operational requirements on range + target RCS
 a compromise with waveform design (range = energy = average power)
 Radar instantaneous bandwidth requirements
 operational requirements on range resolution
 System bandwidth
 frequency diversity stems from operational requirements on coverage
 frequency agility stems from operational requirements on Electronic Protection
  There is no redundancy in radar transmission

AND
Operational requirements have become more stringent
 Advanced radar techniques are mainly for :
 More stringent known in advanced and specified operational requirements
 lesser price for same performance
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 Constraints on the possibilities for sharing (2/3)

Economic considerations
 improved efficient filtering increases costs
 clean transmitter integration is expensive
 signal processing hardware : low cost but more costs on the development side
 legacy radars
 Taking sharing as a requirement early in the design is cost effective

“Other than radar” waveforms

 most of the time they induce noise like interference (desensitisation)
 But surprisingly enough not always  false alarm
 bandwidth trade-off for sharing ?
 narrowband + high PFD => detectable interference, but leaves some
spectrum free
 wideband => low PFD => undetectable ? , but occupies more spectrum

18 Air Systems Division

 Constraints on the possibilities for sharing (3/3)

Communication systems proliferation

 Mobile services (phone, RLANs, etc.)

 increase in the number of terminals
 no unique technical analysis scenarios agreed upon in the regulatory body
 unstabilised business cases
 spread transmitters with quasi-omni directional antennas

 Establish better scenarios for refined studies, to be upgraded with

market development
 Perform detailed specific studies
 Perform refined experimental tests

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 Some conclusive propositions

Air Systems Division

 Conclusive propositions
 Radar performance will ALWAYS be degraded in the presence
of interference.
 Mitigating against interference removes information or looses
time

 Good Frequency planning will provide the best protection to

radar systems

 Sharing with radar is a challenging problem, but there are

some prospects, subjected to detailed study
 More with “discrete” than with “proliferating” interfering system
 “Other than radar” end customers and system designers
need to include radar in the design and normalisation process
early on

 Upgrade of the radiolocation service status to primary

wherever it is secondary
21 Air Systems Division
 Conclusive propositions
 Development costs for new highly complex radar
techniques could drive overall costs upwards

 Filtering and selectivity does provide useful protection to

the radar

 Situation awareness will be a useful tool to minimise the

amount of degradation

 Transmitter technology for radar

 tremendous effort and progress from Magnetron to Solid State
 It is inappropriate to impose too stringent regulatory constraints on
radar transmissions

 Poor installation of communication systems often causes

problems for their protection from radar
22 Air Systems Division
 Thank you for your attention

Air Systems Division