Measurements to Characterize Land Mobile Channel Occupancy for Federal Bands 162-174 MHz and 406-420 MHz in the Denver, CO Area

摘要

In May 2003, President Bush established the Spectrum Policy Initiative to promote the development and implementation of a United States spectrum policy for the 21st century. In response to the Spectrum Policy Initiative, the Secretary of Commerce established a Federal Government Spectrum Task Force and initiated a series of public meetings to address policies affecting spectrum use by the Federal, state, and local governments, and the private sector. The recommendations resulting from these activities were included in two reports released by the Secretary of Commerce in June 2004. Based on the recommendations contained in these reports, the President directed the Federal Agencies on November 30, 2004 to plan the implementation of the 24 recommendations contained in the reports. One of the recommendations directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to develop analytic approaches, software tools, and engineering techniques for evaluating and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of Federal spectrum use. To satisfy one of the goals of that recommendation, NTIA's Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) undertook a series of channel occupancy measurements in Arvada in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area from October 26 to November 3, 2005 in the Land Mobile Radio (LMR) bands 162-174 and 406-420 megahertz (M Hz). The purpose of these measurements was twofold: first, to evaluate and refine LMR channel occupancy measurement techniques, previously developed for the Washington, DC LM R measurements performed in 2004; secondly, to gather actual data on the usage of these bands in the Denver metropolitan area. The data gathered for this area and these bands will be used for further analyses of other aspects of the Presidential Spectrum Policy Initiative. Measurements of LMR channels were conducted at a site on the grounds of the Exempla Colorado Lutheran Home facility, at a location in Arvada overlooking the Denver metropolitan area, using the fourth generation Radio Spectrum Measurement Science (RSMS) system. The measurements were conducted 24 hours per day over the course of 8 consecutive days. The measured data was then processed at the ITS Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. The measurement system was designed to have a spatial coverage area of approximately IOO-kilometer (km) radius for base stations, 50-km radius for mobile units, and 25-km radius for handheld units. The results are reported in terms of channel usage for designated LMR channels, irrespective of whether the individual channels have been assigned or not. The purpose is to determine, given a specific threshold sensitivity, whether LMR channels at a location overlooking the Denver metropolitan area are being used at that location and to what extent. There are four types of data summarized in this report: (1) mean channel usage, (2) mean busiest hour statistics, (3) power-level statistics, and (4) statistics on percent of channels (and hourly channel usage) exceeding a given percent usage.