A Comparative Systems-Engineering Framework for RFI Coexistence in Radio Astronomy and Aviation Safety Systems
Radio astronomy and aviation safety systems occupy opposite ends of the signal-power spectrum, yet both depend on the same finite resource and are increasingly squeezed by commercial broadband wireless services. The two fields protect their receivers using separately derived, apparently incommensurable criteria: the ITU-R RA.769 detrimental-interference threshold for radio telescopes, and the radar-altimeter interference thresholds established by RTCA Special Committee 239 for the 5G C-band coexistence problem. We introduce a single coexistence-margin framework, M(f,d) = Pth(f) - Prx(f,d), and show both criteria to be special cases of it. We apply this framework to two case studies, the Karoo Radio Quiet Zone surrounding MeerKAT and SKA-Mid, and the global 5G C-band/altimeter dispute, showing that, despite unrelated regulatory histories, both converged on the same three-lever solution: guard-band separation, bounded exclusion zones, and receiver-side filtering, governed by mandatory coordination rather than static exclusion. We then show that interference-excision, beamforming, and statistical-calibration pipelines developed for radio interferometry are closely analogous to, and in several cases directly reusable for, operations required by ADS-B validation, phased-array radar clutter rejection, and predictive-maintenance anomaly detection. The unifying framework, and the finding that two independently-arising regulatory histories converge on the same design pattern, is this papers central contribution: M(f,d) has not, to our knowledge, been proposed before as a common formalism spanning these two protection regimes, and the toolkit mapping distinguishes genuine reuse from looser analogy. The result is a reusable design pattern and shared skills/infrastructure pipeline, applicable wherever a narrowband receiver must coexist with a growing broadband commercial neighbour.