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
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...
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...
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
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Margaret H. Pinson et al., “Test Plans, Results, and Lessons Learned About Open RAN Integration During the NTIA 5G Challenges,” Special Publication NTIA SP-25-578, April 2025
The vision of the 5G Challenge competitions was to accelerate adoption of 5G open interfaces, interoperable subsystems, and multi-vendor solutions by fostering a large, vibrant, and growing vendor community dedicated to advancing 5G interoperability...
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Frank H. Sanders et al., “NTIA Case Study: Adjacent-Band Coexistence Between 5G Base Station Transmitters and Air Traffic Control Radar Receivers,” Technical Report NTIA TR 25-577, December 2024
The introduction of Fifth Generation New Radio (5G NR) base station transmitters into 2590–2690 MHz in the U.S., adjacent to the spectrum band 2700–2900 MHz used by air traffic control radars, has resulted in interference effects in some safety-of-l...
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...