Tag: regulations

An overview of IARU R1 interim meeting proposals

The IARU R1 interim meeting is being held in Vienna, Austria, on April 27 and 28. This post is an overview of the proposals that will be presented during this meeting, from the point of view of the usual topics that I treat in this blog.

The proposals can be found in the conference documents. There are a total of 64 documents for the meeting, so a review of all of them or an in-depth read would be a huge work. I have taken a brief look at all the papers and selected those that I think to be more interesting. For these, I do a brief summary and include my technical opinion about them. Hopefully this will be useful to some readers of this blog, and help them spot what documents could be more interesting to read in detail.

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Proposal for IARU R1 about spectrum regulations for Amateur satellites

Together with URE and AMSAT-EA, I have presented a proposal for the upcoming IARU R1 Vienna interim meeting 2019 addressing the problems derived from the use of Amateur satellite spectrum by universties, research institutions and private companies. The title of the proposal is “Satellites transmitting on Amateur bands with undocummented protocols or without permission”, and the text of the proposal can be found here.

This proposal addresses the problems caused both by satellites that are using undocummented protocols for their telemetry, so Amateurs are unable to decode their signals, and satellites that are transmitting without having obtained the appropriate IARU frequency coordination.

The number of small satellites that are launched each year seems to be growing steadily, and many satellite developers are resorting to the Amateur satellite service as a way to obtain free spectrum access, regardless of whether their mission fits the requirements for an Amateur satellite. I think that we must try to defend our Amateur bands and ensure that proper use is made of them. Hopefully this proposal is a first step in making people aware of the problem and trying to find solutions.

A related document was written by the Open Research Institute to the FCC on July 2018. This is a recommended reading.

Please help spread this proposal to give visibility to the current problems with the Amateur satellite spectrum.