Military learning to share congested radio spectrum.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Industry Viewpoint

* The allocation and management of radio spectrum hasn't changed much since the day when Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi first broadcast over the airwaves.

It involves taking electromagnetic spectrum, cutting it up into little pieces and handing it out to one system or operator or another, Paul Tilgham, a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said in an interview.

That is "presupposing that it has to be divided and presupposing that every person you are going to give it to is going to use it to its fullest extent, all the time everywhere on the globe," he said.

"It's a simplification that we have carried since the advent of the first radio frequency systems," he added.

DARPA is embarking on a three-year grand challenge that aims to change the means of managing spectrum and to make its use more efficient and automated.

It coincides with an Obama administration directive that calls for the military and federal agencies to free up 500 megahertz of their spectrum for commercial use by 2020. This too calls for new ways to coordinate the use of the airwaves as they become increasingly crowded.

The fact that spectrum has become congested is a problem in the military going back decades. The explosion in the use of cell phones made the problem worse. The introduction of data hungry smartphones seemingly overnight has now created a crisis.

"Our industry is growing by leaps and bounds ... and the use of those devices is going nuts," Paul Anuszkiewicz, vice president of spectrum planning at CTIA, The Wireless Association, said at the Milcom conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

The trade association has already seen the Federal Communications Commission release a significant amount of bandwidth. Every 10 megahertz of new spectrum the industry gains results in billions of dollars invested in the economy, he pointed out.

A White House fact sheet released in July said the FCC was halfway to its goal of freeing up the 500 megahertz of bandwidth for commercial use. Auctions of the newly available spectrum netted the Treasury Department $40 billion.

Thomas J. Taylor, deputy director for policy, technology and operations, at the office of the Defense Department's chief information officer's spectrum policy and programs directorate, said that's good. A strong economy means a strong military.

There are two issues: domestic and overseas. Both require more efficient use of the airwaves. Stateside, the military needs this spectrum for...