Spectrum sharing between communications and ATC radar systems

Increasing demand for wireless communications services within the spectrum bands that are most conducive to operating cellular and mobile broadband systems is aggravating frequency congestion within the electromagnetic spectrum. Primary–secondary spectrum sharing can be exploited to alleviate spectrum congestion by allowing secondary systems to access opportunistically the allotted frequency band of a primary system. In this study, the feasibility of spectrum sharing between air traffic control (ATC) radar and long-term evolution (LTE) wireless communications systems is investigated through waveform-level simulations and link budget analyses. Numerical results show that with moderate frequency and range separation, spectrum sharing between a scanning ATC radar and a single LTE cell in L-band is possible, though both systems are ultimately subject to quantified performance degradations due to the impact each has on the other.