Frank H. Sanders, Edward F. Drocella Jr., and Robert L. Sole

Abstract: A spectrum sharing scheme is considered in which ship-based radar stations are operating in the same spectrum band as on-shore communication transmitters, and in which the communication transmitters will cause interference to the radar receivers when interference, I, to noise, N, ratios in the radar receivers exceed a given level (e.g., I/N >= -6 dB). The problem is that on-shore environmental sensing capability (ESC) monitors need to determine whether interference is occurring at off-shore radar receivers based only on information from the radars’ transmitters, with no information available from the victim radar receivers themselves. We describe an on-shore monitoring approach in which the principle of reciprocal propagation between the directions of radar-to-ESC and ESC-to-radar provides a simple go/no-go (single-bit) output from the ESCs to an associated Spectrum Access System (SAS) controlling the communication network, to perform on-shore channel changes for protection of the off-shore radar receivers. The ESC station outputs are based on a power-detection threshold of radar signals at the ESCs (e.g., -64 dBm peak-detected power in 1 MHz bandwidth). Examples are provided in which ship-based radar receivers are protected by a simple algorithm applied to a group of on-shore ESCs and a SAS controller for the terrestrial communication network channel frequencies.

Keywords: radar; radio propagation; antenna gain; spectrum sharing; Spectrum Access System (SAS); Citizens Broadband Radio Service Devices (CBSD); environmental sensing capability (ESC); interference monitoring

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