Government to Facilitate Testing, Sharing of Results for Spectrum Sharing

U.S. federal agencies signed an agreement that sets the charter for the National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network to create a collaborative framework with an eventual goal of facilitating access to a wide range of testing that supports the sharing of the finite spectrum resource.

The agreement, between the Department of Commerce and Defense Department, will also let other federal agencies and private sector participants join the network. The effort includes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and is the result of a key provision of the 2013 Presidential Memorandum Expanding America’s Leadership in Wireless Innovation seeking more research, development, testing and evaluation of spectrum sharing technologies and other wireless-related efficiencies.

“Rapid advances in communications technology have created significant new demands for access to wireless channels,” according to Willie May, acting undersecretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST acting director. “We need efficient and effective ways of sharing spectrum to continue to benefit from technology advances while balancing the needs of commercial broadband, national security and public safety.”

The network’s key functions are to:
• Facilitate and coordinate spectrum sharing and engineering capabilities
• Create a trusted capability for evaluating spectrum sharing technologies
• Perform outreach activities to identify spectrum-related testing and modeling needs
• Protect proprietary, classified and sensitive information while facilitating maximum dissemination

Participants will share intellectual capacity, modeling and simulation capabilities, laboratory facilities and test ranges, according to a news release. Officials seek mutually agreeable ways for spectrum users to share specific bands and resolve the pressing challenges to coexistence and shared used of the finite resource.

The government pledged to find ways to make available an additional 500 megahertz of spectrum for commercial use by 2020.

“Developing systems that are efficient, flexible, adaptable and support greater sharing helps ensure our military readiness and optimizes operational effectiveness while allowing more spectrum to be available for public use—witnessed in the success of the record breaking AWS-3 [advanced wireless services-3] auction,” Defense Department Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen said in a statement.