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
November 26, 2025
The key to successful Open RAN deployments — the ability of subsystems from different vendors to seamlessly interoperate — is also the greatest challenge.
Commercial Tier 1 radio access networks (RANs) deployed today...
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...
Recent Publications
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Adam C. Hicks and Robert J. Achatz, “Preliminary Selection Criteria and Considerations for Receiver Site Installation at McMurdo Station, Antarctica
,” Conference Paper, April 2026Spectrum and noise measurements were conducted in 2024 at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The measurement system and select results are presented for two sites. A site selection criterion is introduced and used to evaluate site suitability for a High F...
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Max Hollingsworth et al., “Repurposing Cellular Reference Signals: Accurate RSRP Measurements with Mobile Phones,” Conference Paper, March 2026
Reference signals in both LTE and 5G cellular networks present an untapped and abundant signal of oppor-tunity for high quality radio frequency (RF) propagation measurements. Commercial-off-the-shelf mobile phones continuously capture and report Ref...
This Month in ITS History
April 1942: IRPL Publishes First Ionospheric Predictions
In April of 1942, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War II, the Interdepartmental Radio Propagation Laboratory (IRPL) published its first ionospheric predictions. These predictions on the height and state of the ionospheric layer of the Earth’s atmosphere were used to determine which frequencies and paths would b...