Automated Radio Frequency (RF) Spectrum Management for Wideband Electronic Warfare (EW) Systems

An adaptive, multi-faceted approach is developed for wideband spectrum recognition and management for dynamically (automatically) adapting the EW receiver architecture to tolerate and operate in the presence of large narrow- and wide-band interference. At RF, interference suppression (integrated with RF filtering and attenuation), reduces strong interference below the AD (and other components) saturation limits. High level RF signal detection predicts intermods and spurs enabling efficient cueing of measurement resources to reduce TOI impacted by false tuning. Adaptive bandwidth channelization and precision analysis are employed to maximize SNR and measurement quality. Knowledge of known interferers (i.e. own-ship radar and SATCOM) is employed.. Proven designs for Interference Detection and Characterization measure and report BOTH the signal and interference, maintaining high POI in the presence of interference for cases when time and frequency overlaps occur. The approach does not rely on an A/D technology, but rather on reconfigurable processing to enhance system performance and is also synergistic with adaptive beam forming methods. An architecture simulation (MATLABTM) is used to obtain performance estimates illustrating the efficacy of obtaining 100% signal POI, with the high dynamic range and spectral coverage required. Cost versus performance is characterized versus bandwidth, SNR, SIR, S(N+I)R or other key parameters.