ITS: The Nation’s Spectrum and Communications Lab
Our mission is to ADVANCE innovation in communications technologies, INFORM spectrum and communications policy for the benefit of all stakeholders, and INVESTIGATE our Nation’s most pressing telecommunications challenges through research that employees are proud to deliver. Learn more about ITS on our YouTube Channel or read about our research programs in the Technical Progress Report.
August 18, 2020
Presentations from the ISART 2020, the International
Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies: 5G Spectrum and a
Zero-Trust Network are now available on the ...
April 2, 2020
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...
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
September 1952: NBS Chief Called Before House Un-American Activities Committee
On September 5, 1952 Ed Condon, former chief of the National Bureau of Standards, made his second appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) at the behest of Senator Richard Vail. Condon had made political enemies on the committee with his unapologetic demands for civilian control of atomic energy and his support of international organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an organization dedicated to sharing scientific discoveries between the US and USSR. The Committee was especially interested in investigating Truman appointees who were involved with nuclear secrets, and Condon fit the bill perfectly. Condon first appeared before the HUAC in 1948 on charges that he was the "weakest link in our atomic security." Condon defended himself successfully, without pleading the fifth amendment, which was seen by the committee as as sign of guilt, but despite the support of scientists both within and outside government ranks, Condon was consistently hounded by the HUAC until he resigned his government commission in 1951. He was brought before the committee a second time in September 1952 to defend himself again. Despite his separation from the Bureau, and a second successful defense, his security clearance, which he required for his new job with Corning Glass, was revoked in 1954. Unable to work in industry on military contracts, Condon moved into academia, but his career continued to suffer from attacks by anti-communist crusaders until the mid 1960s. Today, ITS continues to work hard to ensure that research results are published as they are obtained, in accordance with the Department of Commerce Administrative Order 219-1 prohibiting "approval or non-approval [of publication] to be based on policy, budget, or management implications of the research."