What We Do
The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) is the research and engineering laboratory of NTIA. We provide timely technical advice in support of NTIA’s mandate to develop and promulgate Executive Branch policies that address domestic and international communications 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. For more information on our research programs, see the FY 2016 Technical Progress Report.
Path Lost: Navigating propagation challenges for ultra-dense wireless systems
July 24-26, 2018, in Broomfield, Colorado
Network densification in response to the explosion in demand for wireless data presents technical economic, and regulatory challenges ... Network operators are looking to ultra-dense networks and ever-shrinking cell sizes to build capacity, but existing propagation models have an inadequate level of fidelity to represent these environments. ... ISART 2018 brought together a record number of leading experts from government, academia, and industry to explore the current state of the art and map the path forward to the next generation of foundational propagation models. for more, see the agenda with links to presentations and posters and the wrap-up blog by ITS Director Keith Gremban.
April 24, 2018
As demand for spectrum for commercial use continues to grow,
policymakers are exploring spectrum sharing as a way to expand
capacity while still fulfilling the needs of federal agencies. This
model can work only if rules...
February 23, 2018
The Radio Act of 1912 dictated perhaps the first spectrum
efficiency requirement when it said that “In all circumstances,
except in case of signals or radiograms relating to vessels in
distress, all stations shall...
February 6, 2018
Spectrum monitoring—long-term continuous measurement of the
radio frequency environment from multiple sensors—is widely seen as
essential to enabling increased exploitation of spectrum.
Monitoring is expected be the...
April 3, 2017
Evolving and improving the science behind spectrum sharing is
essential to NTIA’s commitment to meeting the demand for spectrum
among federal and commercial users. Just as collaboration between
spectrum users can unlock...
January 3, 2018
A new NTIA Technical
Report, published at the very end of 2017, reports the results
of an investigation of speech intelligibility in different radio
environments recently completed...
New Publications
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