WASHINGTON-Could there be such as thing as spectrum pollution?
That’s a question federal regulators are now pondering.
While it has not been established that a problem exists, the Federal Communications Commission believes the issue is worth investigating because of the potential adverse economic impact to wireless devices.
“Our hypothesis is the noise floor has been going up for the last 50 years,” said Bernard Stuecker, director of equipment standards in the FCC’s Compliance and Information Bureau.
The proliferation of electronic and electrical devices, such as computers and microwave ovens, has upped the amount of unintended radio frequency emissions in the airwaves.
Spectrum noise varies within each frequency band and geographic location. The FCC wants to find out if the noise floor is at a level at which consumers cannot receive desired signals.
For example, if the clock speed of computers continues to increase, spurious RF emissions could creep up into frequency bands that businesses have spent billions of dollars on in order to provide new personal communications services.
A low-budget study was conducted at the FCC’s Columbia, Md., labs last spring on spectrum pollution, but the results haven’t been fully analyzed. More sophisticated research, using equipment leftover from closed-down FCC field offices and covering 500 kHz to 3 GHz, could begin later this year.
“We are trying to determine whether frequencies are being degraded by the noise floor over time,” said Stuecker.
If the FCC finds that unlicensed devices, like computers, are polluting the airwaves, the agency could tighten RF emission levels of such products governed by Part 15 rules.
Stuecker said the FCC’s interest in the subject was prompted by Dale Hatfield, a telecommunications consultant in Boulder, Colo., and a former federal policymaker.
An eight-member team comprising FCC staff from Washington, D.C., and Denver and staff from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will be working on the next study.
