ITS: The Nation’s Spectrum and Communications Lab

Our mission is to ADVANCE innovation in communications technologies, INFORM spectrum and communications policy for the benefit of all stakeholders, and INVESTIGATE our Nation’s most pressing telecommunications challenges through research that employees are proud to deliver. 

News

February 25, 2025

Adam Hicks (l.) and Robert Achatz (r.) prepare to leave for McMurdo Station. (Photo credit: USAP)

In December 2024, ITS electronics engineers Robert Achatz and Adam Hicks travelled from ITS’s Boulder laboratory...

January 6, 2025

To make the most efficient use of available bandwidth, how much can speech and video be compressed before the end user perceives them as degraded? ITS’s Audio Quality...

October 17, 2024

The inaugural International Open RAN Symposium (IORS) convened September 17–19, 2024, in Golden, Colorado, United States of America. NTIA welcomed over 250 participants at the inaugural Symposium from over 20 countries.

From plenary sessions,...

Recent Publications

Ethel C. Marden and Robert D. Elbourn operating SEAC

This Month in ITS History

June 1961: First Topside Sounder Rocket Launched

At 11:17 PM on June 24, 1961, NASA launched a Javelin missile from Wallops Island, VA. The Javelin contained an ionospheric sounder created by the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL). The sounder used radio waves to examine the atmosphere it was passing through. The sounder acted like a radar, measuring the wid...

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