Spectrum Surveys and RF Measurements

Channel Occupancy

Spectrum Refarming

Interference Hunting

Signal Identification

On behalf of clients, we process RF Measurements and manage large collections of Spectrum Surveys.

Data is stored either in the cloud or on-premise.

Clients include Spectrum Regulators, Radio Astronomy Bodies, and Intelligence Agencies.

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DISCLAIMER: The sample surveys displayed below are for educational purposes only and do not necessarily reflect the (historic) situation in a market.

IMT Spectrum Survey in Belgium

This case brings us to Belgium, which was one of the first countries to launch 5G NR in the 2100 MHz band. The incumbent operator Proximus (Belgacom) refarmed their 2100 MHz spectrum to be used for 3G and 5G NR. By chance, the local operator Base (Telenet) emits a 4G signal adjacent to the Proximus assignment. As a result we can observe a 3G HSPA, 5G NR and 4G LTE signal next to each other (also known as IMT coexistence). The 5G NR signal thus being sandwitched between the 3G and 4G signal. One could wonder why the 5G NR carrier is not positioned at the edge of the 2100 MHz band instead. At the time of the spectrum scan, the Proximus 5G network operated in NSA Non-Stand-Alone mode and used the 1800 MHz band as anchor.

IMT Spectrum Survey in Mexico

In Mexico City, we discovered an interesting case of 4G LTE carrier deployment in the 2.6 GHz band. Telcel (America Movil) holds a 30 MHz TDD licence in this band. While it is common to deploy 20 MHz + 10 MHz carriers in such a case, Telcel setup two 15 MHz carriers instead. The 15 MHz + 15 MHz configuration puts Telcel beyond AT&T, which has a 20 MHz TDD carrier on air. However, there may be valid reasons for this carrier deployment strategy such as traffic load balancing or fixed-mobile service differentation.

Netherlands Broadcast Tower Fire and Collapse

On 15 July 2011 two main broadcast towers in the Netherlands caught fire on the same day. The Lopik tower (367 meters) survived the fire, but the Smilde tower (294 meters) collapsed around 15:30h local time. Terrestrial Radio and TV broadcasts were interrupted in large parts of the country for about 1 year. A temporary mast (100 meters) was erected in nearby Assen city to repair some of the lost coverage. The sequence of events on the day of the Smilde collapse is clearly visible in the spectrogram below. This data is valuable input for further analysis. The Smilde tower has been rebuild. Despite strong clues, the root cause of the fires has not been determined conclusively to date.


Spectrogram: courtesy of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy ASTRON, photo: still from TV Drenthe News Broadcast, 15 July 2011.

USA IBOC In-Band-On-Channel Digital Radio

While the migration from terrestrial Analogue TV (PAL/SECAM/NTSC) to Digital TV (DVB/ISDB/ATSC) runs very smooth, there is no concensus about the future of Analogue Sound Broadcasting (FM/AM). The USA currently favours an In-Band-On-Channel IBOC solution and two proprietary solutions can be found on air. The top left plot shows the HD Radio solution by iBiquity Digital Corporation. The recording was made in San Francisco (94.9 MHz / 30kW ERP / 357m HAAT). The HD Radio OFDM carriers are placed on either side of the analogue FM-carrier at ±130-200kHz distance.

The neighbouring station at 95.7 MHz also has enabled HD Radio. The top right plot shows the analogue baseband (MPX) signal after demodulation which is not affected by the HD Radio technology. The 2nd proprietary IBOC solution is FMeXtra by Digital Radio Express and is shown in the bottom two plots. The signal was also captured in San Francisco (88.5 MHz / 110kW ERP / 387m HAAT). The FMeXtra technology places the OFDM carriers in the baseband (SCA), thus before FM modulation. Digital Radio Express claims that the modulation power will increase only little due to FMeXtra.

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