Flux Research Group / School of Computing

Reactive Interference Management for Radio Astronomy in Radio Dynamic Zones Using ASTRA

Aarushi Sarbhai, David Johnson, Kirk Webb, Leigh Stoller, Oren Collaco, Alex Orange, Samuel Zachary, Bo Pearce, Serhat Tadik, Sylvia Llosa, Arvind Aradhya, Alexander Pollak, Wael Farah, Jacobus (Kobus) Van der Merwe, Kevin Gifford, Neal Patwari, Gregory Durgin, David DeBoer, and Sneha Kumar Kasera

IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (IEEE DySPAN) 2025.

areas
Mobile Networking

abstract

Radio Dynamic Zones (RDZs) enable diverse spectrum-sharing scenarios, including advancing coexistence between active and passive spectrum users. We consider RDZs where radio astronomy coexists with active transmitters and introduce the Adaptive Spectrum Tuning and Reactive Allocation (ASTRA) framework, used by a Zone Management System to manage spectrum access to transmitters. We develop and deploy the first RDZ testbed at a radio astronomy facility, the Hat Creek Radio Observatory, to demonstrate a practical solution for managing interference from active transmitters to radio telescopes in over-the-air experiments. To comprehensively evaluate our approach, we simulate RDZs of varying sizes and demonstrate that ASTRA maintains interference at the radio telescopes below acceptable thresholds while maximizing spectrum access to transmitters in the zone.