NTIA Spectrum Monitoring Pilot Could Yield Valuable Data, Say Microsoft, T-Mobile

Microsoft has been collecting data on its own as part of its Spectrum Observatory, the company said. The system should be designed to “interoperate with other third-party measurement units and spectrum databases to enable academic and industry researchers, commercial and government spectrum managers, and independent database managers to implement and deploy their own data collection and dissemination systems,” Microsoft said. Information on the pilot should be made available to interested parties and should do continuous monitoring “at remote sites with system control and data uploads performed over the Internet,” the company said.

"Our experience in this space has led us to believe that it is a logistical and financial challenge for a single party to install all new measurement units and continue to support the ongoing operations of those units,” Microsoft said. “Additionally, Microsoft sees benefits in making this a collaborative effort involving parties in different locations, presenting different perspectives on data collection, and potentially arriving at different conclusions about spectrum allocation and use based on the data collected. These are benefits that can be derived from an open and collaborative approach.”

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s exam of spectrum sharing makes clear “any monitoring program should consider a wide range of incumbent scenarios,” T-Mobile said. These should include “low-power and high-power use, airborne and satellite use, and intermittent as well as constant operations,” the carrier said. “The more comprehensive the evaluation, the more useful the data the monitoring program will yield.” Information collected should be used to update federal spectrum data in the Government Master File and should be made available in a transparent form to industry, T-Mobile said. “T-Mobile recognizes the importance of protecting critical government information and agrees that the distribution of classified or sensitive data should be restricted,” the carrier said. “However, in order to facilitate the exchange of important information between government and industry stakeholders, NTIA should sponsor appropriate industry representatives to receive classified or sensitive information through expansion of its trusted agent program.” T-Mobile was the only carrier to weigh in so far in the comments posted by NTIA.

Monitoring by itself is of only limited usefulness, the Enterprise Wireless Alliance said, noting that the FCC first launched a spectrum monitoring project in Chicago in the early 1970s. “That regional spectrum management program ultimately was abandoned in 1976 and its personnel reassigned to Washington ’to implement a nationwide automated system for spectrum management,'” EWA said. “The difficulty of using monitoring to identify meaningful spectrum sharing opportunities was not the only reason the program was discontinued, but it was a major cause.” More recently, the FCC decided not to rely on monitoring alone in allowing the use of the TV white spaces to access the Internet, EWA said: “The FCC concluded that the real world spectrum environment was sufficiently complex and variable as to make it impractical to rely on sensing for this purpose."

Dish Network and EchoStar, filing jointly, suggested it would make sense to exclude some bands, “for instance where satellite or passive services operate or to utilize different testing methodologies that measure spectrum efficiency in a different manner.” Monitoring satellite spectrum is difficult, the companies said. “Satellite earth stations use highly directional antennas to transmit energy toward the sky, so there is little likelihood of assessing the presence of an earth station unless the monitoring station is in its immediate vicinity,” they said. “For signals emanating from satellites, the signal is very weak by the time it reaches Earth. To capture the signal requires the installation of a large, highly directional antenna capable of receiving the signal. While NTIA could install such facilities, the measurements from these stations would be limited to the signal radiated by the satellite toward that location on Earth. Given that satellites tend to use shaped beams or spot beams that can be very narrow, it is entirely possible that a monitoring center could completely fail to see activity from an operational satellite because no energy is being transmitted toward its specific location.”

Consultant firm ICF International said the pilot should include stationary and nonstationary signal capture devices, which “will enable NTIA to gather data from a broader geographic perspective on what signals are present in which parts of the spectrum.” NTIA should also gather full-bandwidth spectrum recordings, ICF said. “By recording the spectrum of selected bands, much more information is available compared to a parametric monitoring station. Spectrum recording also has the advantage of preserving the recorded signals in full fidelity that allow deeper signals analysis, and in many cases, full signal decoding.”