Testing For Coexistence In Crowded And Contested RF Environments

In this paper, we review some of the key research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) challenges that arise when developing and deploying systems that need to operate in congested and/or contested RF environments.

We discuss the key issues facing coexistence, such as a contested and congested spectrum, spectral sensing, spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum allocation. We review some real-world examples of coexistence challenges such as C band 5G LTE with aircraft radar altimeters and GPS interference with spectrally co-located satellite based communications. We conclude with an overview of the characteristics and architectures of test systems that are used to create realistic RF environments for testing systems under real-world operational conditions in a controlled laboratory environment.