A recent BBC news article regarding a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) contract award for operation within the 70 centimeter band has raised some concern within the Amateur Radio community. The contract to Airbus Space would involve determining the density of Earth’s forests using a P-band (432-438 MHz) SAR. That band segment was allocated for use by the Earth Exploration Satellite (Active) Service at World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03). ARRL Chief Technology Officer Brennan Price, N4QX, said SAR activity has not been found to be a significant problem to Amateur Radio activity on the 70 centimeter band. Both EESS (Active) and Amateur Radio are secondary on the band in International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Regions 2 and 3 (Amateur Radio is co-primary with the Radiolocation Service in ITU Region 1), and Price said SAR operation is subject to significant constraints.
“The interference potential from one orbiting SAR to one fixed Amateur Radio station is on the order of less than 1 minute over an orbital period of more than 10 days,” Price said. “Practically speaking, nearby electrical lines and Part 15 devices are more likely to be bothersome.”
Price said news items in articles aimed at the general public are “often notoriously short” on technical details. ITU-R Recommendation RS.1260-11 — incorporated by reference in the ITU Radio Regulations and binding on EESS (Active) stations — spells out the WRC-03 consensus on SARs operating at 70 centimeters. Among other things, RS.1260-1 states that EESS (Active) instruments operation profile “shall be campaign-oriented, targeted to specific geographical areas and shall limit the instrument active time to the minimum required to achieve the campaign objectives. Thus, the measurements carried out by the instrument do not require continuous operation of the instrument, and intervals of months between successive measurements on the same area can be expected.” The Recommendation further states that the operational duty cycle of an SAR in campaign mode will be 15 percent (typically 10 percent).
A Russian satellite, AIST-2D, launched on April 28, will conduct SAR work as a technology demonstration and scientific research satellite developed at Samara Aerospace University. Its 200 W SAR will operate in the 433-438 MHz band. It will also transmit telemetry in the 70 centimeter band.
More
New NCDXF President: K6MM At the 2017 Annual Board Meeting of the Northern California DX Foundation this past weekend at the Visalia International DX Convention, John Miller, K6MM, was elected President. The full list of Officers for 201... Read more
![Italians gain 60m allocation [ 5MHz ]](https://qrznow.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/60METERS_BAND-90x60.jpg)
Lastest News
A DOUBLE-GUST OF SOLAR WIND
A DOUBLE-GUST OF SOLAR WIND: Earth is about to get hit by solar wind–twice. Two streams of solar wind are heading our way. They’re flowing... Read more
Yet more features in the SDRplay Spectrum Analyser
Steve Andrew has just added a couple of cool new features to his popular Spectrum Analyser software which works with all the SDRplay RSPs. is latest r... Read more
Bidding Begins Today in the Annual ARRL Online Auction
Bidding gets under way today, October 17, on more than 230 items on the block in the 14th annual ARRL Online Auction. Bidding begins at 10 AM EST (140... Read more
Fairwaves launches new SDR products
Fairwaves is launching two new “X“- products this fall: XYNC – the ultimate low-cost massive MIMO SDR, with up to 32×32 transmit/receive channels XCOM... Read more
IARU Secretary David Sumner, K1ZZ, Offers Amateur Radio Perspective on WRC-19
Writing in a special World Radiocommunication Conference 2019 (WRC-19) edition of ITU News Magazine, International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Secretar... Read more
Warning: file_get_contents(https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqrznow.com%2Fno-need-for-panic-regarding-synthetic-aperture-radars-on-70-centimeters-arrl-cto-says%2F): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found in /home/qrznow/public_html/wp-content/themes/goodnews5/framework/functions/posts_share.php on line 151
