On the Limits of Coherent Time-Domain Cancellation of Radio Frequency Interference

In many sensing (viz., radio astronomy) and radar applications, the received signal of interest (SOI) exhibits a significantly wider bandwidth or weaker power than the interference signal, rendering it indistinguishable from the background noise. Such scenarios arise frequently in applications such as passive radar, cognitive radio, low-probability-of-intercept (LPI) radar, and planetary radar for radio astronomy, where canceling the radio frequency interference (RFI) is critical for uncovering the SOI. In this work, we examine the Demodulation-Remodulation (Demod-Remod) based interference cancellation framework for the RFI. This approach demodulates the unknown interference, creates a noise-free interference replica, and coherently subtracts it from the received signal. To evaluate the performance limits, we employ the performance metric termed \textit{interference rejection ratio} (IRR), which quantifies the interference canceled. We derive the analytical expressions of IRR as a function of the optimal estimation variances of the signal parameters. Simulation results confirm the accuracy of the analytical expression for both single-carrier and multi-carrier interference signals and demonstrate that the method can substantially suppress the interference at a sufficient interference-to-noise ratio (INR), enabling enhanced detection and extraction of the SOI. We further extend the analysis to the scenario where the SOI is above the noise floor, and confirm the validity of the theoretical IRR expression in this scenario. Lastly, we compare the Demod-Remod technique to other time-domain cancellation methods. The result of the comparison identifies the conditions under which each method is preferred, offering practical guidelines for interference mitigation under different scenarios.