What We Do
The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) is the research and engineering laboratory of NTIA. We perform advanced communications research to inform spectrum policy and develop capabilities to solve emerging telecommunications issues. We serve as a principal Federal resource for solving the telecommunications concerns of other Federal agencies, state and local Governments, industry, and international organizations. We work to continually advance the state of the art in radio frequency (RF) propagation measurement, RF propagation modeling, spectrum monitoring and enforcement, electromagnetic compatibility analysis, interference mitigation strategies, evaluation of end-user experience, and engineering analysis of evolving technologies to manage and share spectrum efficiently. Learn more about ITS on our YouTube Channel or read about our research programs in the Technical Progress Report.
Registration is now open for the fully virtual ISART 2020! Check
out the updated Agenda for the 2020 International
Symposium...
The Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary (OPEN) Government
Data Act, signed into law on January 14, 2019, requires federal
agencies to publish their information online as open data, using
standardized, machine-readable data formats. In addition,...
May 9, 2019
ITS has a long history of leadership in air-to-ground
propagation model development within the International
Telecommunications Union – Radiocommunication Sector’s (ITU-R)
Study Group 3 – Radiowave Propagation (and its...
March 10, 2019
How can we get more use out of the radio spectrum? One way is by
sharing radio bands between users who have never shared before.
Consider radio frequencies near 3.5 GHz. Until recently, that part
of the spectrum was...
November 26, 2018
Behind every initiative to share spectrum are models of
how radio waves in a particular band propagate through different
environments. How far will a signal travel before it becomes too
faint to be useful or...
New Publications
This Month in ITS History
August 1958: “System Loss in Radio Wave Propagation” Published
Ken Norton’s ground breaking article on “System Loss in Radio Wave Propagation” first appeared in the August 1958 edition of the NBS Journal of Research. The work presented a new concept in propagation studies: transmission loss. Norton’s concept simplified the calculation of signal losses for radio engineers. His work allowed better engineering of radio systems with reduced power usage, since the power required to transmit over a required distance could be easily determined using his method. The algorithms published in the article also allowed engineers to easily compare antennas, even at different frequencies. Six years later the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory (CRPL) published Tech Note 101, one of its most famous publications. Tech Note 101 built on the foundation of Norton’s work and expanded on it, describing a way that users could accurately predict the distance at which a transmitter will work. Norton’s publication shaped the agency’s work even after it became the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) in 1967. Radio propagation predictions based on the algorithms described in these publications became one of ITS’s primary outputs in the 1970s. Current ITS propagation modeling work in support of more efficient spectrum sharing continues to build on Norton’s research to develop more accurate propagation prediction models.