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The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal agencies, established a Spectrum Sharing Innovation Test-Bed (Test-Bed) pilot program to examine the feasibility of increased sharing between Federal and non-Federal users. This pilot program is an opportunity for the Federal agencies to work cooperatively with industry, researchers, and academia to objectively examine new technologies that can improve management of the nation's airwaves.
Test-Bed Pilot Program
The Test-Bed Pilot Program will evaluate the ability of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) devices employing spectrum sensing and/or geo-location techniques to share spectrum with land mobile radio systems operating in the 410-420 MHz Federal band and 470-512 MHz non-Federal band. The Test-Bed Pilot Program will be performed in three phases:
1) Equipment Characterization. Equipment employing DSA techniques will be sent to the NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences in Boulder, Colorado and characterization measurements of the DSA capabilities in response to simulated environmental signals will be performed.
2) Evaluation of Capabilities. After successful completion of Phase 1, the DSA capabilities of the equipment in the geographic area of the Test-Bed will be evaluated.
3) Field Operation Evaluation. After successful completion of Phase 2, the DSA equipment will be permitted to transmit in an actual radio frequency signal environment. An automatic signal logging capability will be used during the operation of the Test-Bed to help resolve interference events if they occur. A point-of-contact will also be established to stop Test-Bed operations if interference is reported
Test-Bed Participants:
NTIA submits the enclosed information for purposes of supplementing the record in the above-referenced proceeding.
In an important step to making more spectrum available for commercial use, NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) recently launched a new online site that enables commercial entities and federal agencies to coordinate spectrum use in the 1695-1710 MHz band, one of three bands recently made available by auction for Advanced Wireless Services (AWS). The new NTIA portal fulfills an important requirement to enable sharing in the 1695-1710 MHz portion of this prime spectrum.
Although many federal incumbents will eventually relocate out of the AWS bands, relocation is not feasible for agencies that operate meteorological satellite Earth stations in the 1695-1710 MHz band. To make this band available for sharing, the Federal Communications Commission devised rules that require commercial auction winners to successfully coordinate with federal incumbents prior to operating in geographic areas (coordination zones) around these stations, which will continue to operate indefinitely.
This is part of a series of blogs highlighting how federal agencies use spectrum to carry out important missions for the American people.
This blog post was cross-posted at NASA’s website.
Orbiting 250 miles overhead and circling the Earth every 90 minutes, the International Space Station (ISS) serves as an outpost for exploration and scientific discovery. For 15 years, humans have been living continuously aboard the space station and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. A truly global endeavor, more than 200 people from 15 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 1,700 research investigations from researchers in more than 83 countries.
External image of the International Space Station showing SCAN Testbed installed on the nadir side (Image credit: NASA)