How Lasers Can Light the Path to Spectrum Sharing

Lidar, a sensing method that uses light waves, has been around since the 1960s when the United States developed it as a military technology for defense and aerospace uses, but the advent of publicly-available lidar data has made it a crucial tool for helping radio scientists inside and outside of government better predict where objects like trees and buildings will likely interrupt a wireless signal. These more accurate predictions can enable more opportunities for government and non-government users to share the airwaves. By measuring the time it takes for a laser pulse to return to its sending point, a lidar system measures and records the shapes and heights of buildings, trees, and other surface features to create a very precise three-dimensional model of an environment. Spectrum sharing relies on these propagation models to predict signal strength between two points, such as a cell phone and a government system like an air traffic control radar. Increasing demand for spectrum points to the need for increasingly efficient ways to share it, and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing is a key pillar of the National Spectrum Strategy. Curious to learn more? ISART 2024, the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies that ITS is hosting June 10-13 in Denver, is all about the impact of clutter on modeling and planning spectrum dependent systems and spectrum sharing.