Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing

Overview

Welcome!

You are connected to the web site of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society’s Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing (FARS) Committee. The aim of these pages is to provide FARS members access to information and resources, and to inform the general public about frequency allocation issues.

The Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society seeks to advance geoscience and remote sensing science and technology through scientific, technical and educational activities. The Society strives to promote a high level of technical excellence among its members by exchange of information through conferences, meetings, workshops, publications, and through its committees to provide for the needs of its members.

FARS Charter

To provide technical assessments, guidance and recommendations regarding matters of frequency sharing and interference between remote sensing and other uses of the radiowave spectrum.
Objectives of FARS

Maintain up-to-date data base of: a) present and projected future user requirements for frequencies, bandwidths, and noise floor; b) Scientific rationale for all elements of item a; c) present and projected future sensor specifications (spaceborne, airborne and ground based) regarding frequencies, bandwidths, and noise floor.
Provide a standardized methodology for computing the appropriate ï¿½link budgetsï¿½ to assess RFI between the most common types of remote sensing instruments and sources of interference.
Respond (re-actively) to: a) requests for instrument and user requirements information; and b) technical interference assessments from outside organizations and individuals
Pro-actively investigate potential interference problems.
Promote the development, analysis and dissemination to interested parties of interference mitigation techniques.

If you have comments or contributions to these pages please contact either of the FARS co-chairs listed below.

Bill Blackwell, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Ian Adams, Naval Research Laboratory

Additional technical information can be found at: http://www.ece.osu.edu/~johnson/fars

Download the slides from the IGARSS FARS-TC evening meeting held on July 26, 2011

Download the meeting minutes from the IGARSS FARS-TC evening meeting held on July 26, 2011

Links related to the recent LightSquared/GPS issue (thanks to Jim Mentzer, NOAA for the first five links below):

http://www.pnt.gov/

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?name=11-109

Complete FCC docket on LightSquared

http://www.lightsquared.com/

http://www.saveourgps.org/