ATIC: Automated Testbed for Interference Testing in Communication Systems

The proliferation of communication devices and systems has led to increasingly complex and dynamic spectral environments. This greatly impacts the operations of a multitude of organizations, including commercial entities, academic and non-commercial scientific research, and military equipment and missions, where devices such as cellular systems, radar, andWi-Fi may share the same spectrum space. The automated testbed for interference testing in communication systems (ATIC) provides a low-cost, flexible framework to perform repeatable, well-controlled interference susceptibility testing with a wide variety of "closed-box" communication systems. Examples of closed-box systems that could be evaluated with ATIC include aeronautical mobile telemetry, microwave point-to-point, and WiFi-like systems. Using relatively inexpensive commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, this testbed provides insight into the resilience of communication systems against external interferers, both friendly and hostile, helping inform decisions on spectrum management and deployment of new technologies. This paper provides a systematic approach to executing interference testing via a simple, streamlined setup with example electronics provided. Additionally, guidelines for testbed validation are demonstrated and open source code is provided for rapid, repeatable implementation.