The current state of radio spectrum noise is...

The current state of radio spectrum noise is “difficult to get your arms around,” said Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, at a Silicon Flatirons event Thursday. There are many informal and anecdotal reports that indicate that man-made radio noise is rising, but there’s “not a wealth of information” available based on scientifically derived tests, he said. Radio noise isn’t a new phenomenon, and it’s something that has been rising “since the first radio was turned on,” Knapp said. “Ideally, we'd all agree we'd like to see radio noise be at zero … but it’s really not practical to do that.” The more practical solution is to find technological ways to mitigate the impact of noise, Knapp said. The FCC Technological Advisory Council is looking at ways to reduce noise that affects services, but the group hasn’t “seen any magic bullets yet,” he said. There isn’t a standard for measuring noise that is recognized by both federal agencies and the private sector, said Frank Sanders, Telecommunications Theory Division chief at NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS). Individual researchers do have methodologies for measuring noise, but they are highly dependent on the parameters a researcher sets, he said. Jeff Wepman, an engineer in ITS’s Spectrum and Propagation Measurement division, said distinguishing between noise and interference is “subject to a lot of interpretation.” He said when he does measurements, he attempts to ensure there aren’t any intentionally generated, clearly identifiable signals in the spectrum he’s monitoring.