A Raytheon Technologies subsidiary will develop approaches that could lessen interference between airborne radars and 5G networks in support of the National Spectrum Consortiumâ€™s Dynamic Spectrum Sharing program.

Under an $8 million contract, BBN Technologies will lead a team of researchers from Novowi and Purdue University to create a tool capable of enhancing interference mapping through distributed spectrum optimization, Raytheon said Thursday.

The team will incorporate overlay routing and dynamic virtual slicing capabilities into the tool to minimize interference and divide a network into multiple virtual ones for handling various application needs.

The spectrum-sharing technology will also be designed to perform real-time interference mapping and prediction tasks. It will be optimized by machine learning and large training data sets.

"This testing and experimentation will help us identify ways to use this new technology safely and securely in both the private sector and defense domain," said Brad Tousley, president of Raytheon BBN Technologies.

NSC seeks to determine how 5G networks and airborne radars affect each other through the contract. The initiative supports the 5G to NextG program of the Department of Defense.