Ofcom - Mobile Spectrum Usage Monitoring

While Google Earth has been sending camera bedecked vehicles across the UK taking pictures of our streets the Telecoms regulator Ofcom has been carrying out a similar exercise to monitor RF spectrum usage across the country.

CRFS was engaged by Ofcom in April 2008 to test the feasibility of mobile monitoring of spectrum as a concept and, in doing so, to gather some useful data about spectrum usage around the UK.

CRFS equipped a fleet of commercial vehicles which were travelling in all parts of the United Kingdom as a matter of course to monitor and record details of spectrum usage over a wide range of frequencies (10 MHz to 5 GHz). Data was collected and collated over a five-month period. The data amounted to 4.2 million individual spectrum measurements, which were gathered in a database, amounting to more than 200 GBytes of data. In all more than 65,000 km of driving in all parts of the UK contributed to the database.

The CRFD report titled 'Capture of Spectrum Utilisation Information Using Moving Vehicles' is now available on the Ofcom website at
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/technology/research/
state_use/vehicles/vehicles.pdf

The Register carries an article on the survey titled 'UK spectrum map uncovers mysterious emissions in Cumbria' that can be seen at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/uk_spectrum_map/

Southgate July 2008 - CRFS to undertake radio spectrum monitoring for Ofcom
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/july2008/
crfs_spectrum_monitoring.htm

Cambridge Radio Frequency Services (CRFS)
http://www.crfs.co.uk/