Radiocommunications Agency

Overview of current technological research

Trevor Clarkson Head of Engineering and Research Unit

RAs Role
Planning and Management of most of the civil
radio frequency spectrum Co-ordination of UK views and representation of all UK interests in international negotiations on the use of radio Authorising use of radio by licensing or exemption Formulating technical and operating standards for radio Enforcement of legislation and investigating interference

RAs Technical Research

spectrum management spectrum efficiency interference and EMC issues propagation studies impact of new technologies

Technical research ... a necessary part of the Agencys activity so that the spectrum resource can be efficiently planned and maintained

Research facilities
Radio Technology and Compatibility
Group 3 Task Groups:
Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems Propagation Factors Governing Terrestrial Fixed Service Outages at and above 13GHz Mobile and Terrestrial Propagation

Contracted research to universities and industry

numerous projects placed each year

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)

Core funding programme

Radio Technology and Compatibility Group (RTCG)

Major projects: IR2008 studies for RIS TV compatibility studies emissions from car headlamps radiation from SDSL units ETSI studies using OATS and FAC ITU-R Rec 1546 antenna height gain UWB interference to C-band earth stations

Current research portfolio

4M total

RAL core
Details of projects listed can be found at www.radio.gov.uk

Current research portfolio ...

Indoor Wideband Measurements UMIST

Intermittent & Wideband EMC disturbances

Finalisation of the UK Rain Intensity Map Bounds for frequency assignment problem Auto Tune Antennas EMC in Home Networking CASE Studentship Higher Order Constraint Techniques Unstructured Conductive network for Transmission Measure digital hardware & related circuits

Uni of Bath
Uni of Bath Uni of Cardiff Uni of Herts Uni of Herts Uni of Oxford Uni of Wales Uni of York Uni of York

Impact of EMC emissions from unstructured networks Dithered Clock Osc. On Digital radio services

Uni of York Uni of York

Method for testing EMC emissions from fluorescent lampsUni of York Research into the EMC susceptibility of certain receivers Uni of York Choke Tunnel Design in 900MHZ ISM Machines Railway Electromagnetic Compatibility Study Uni of York Uni of York

Current research portfolio ...

Ultra Wide Band Compatibility Issues Protection of civil aero and maritime services Avoidance of discontinuities in Rec ITU-R P452 Channel Trading Aegis Systems BAE Systems BT Exact Smith Inst. Tech Sty to determine feasibility of sharing HDFSS & BSS Aegis Systems

Radio Channel Assignment

Optimising a staged band reversal process Compatibility between IMT 2000 & MSS @ 2.5GHz Protection for the Radio Astronomy Service DSL Related systems on radio services EMC emissions above 1GHz phase 2 Study on effects of deployment of ADSL

Smith Inst.
TCI Transfinite Sys Transfinite Sys ERA Tech. ERA Tech. NPL

Freq.Sel.Windows to reduce unwanted emissions on radio NTU/Warwick

Spectrum Management Strategies for LES

Emissions from future electric transport, phase 2

Mason Comms
MIRA

Current research portfolio ...

European Radio Research Activities Refractivity Index in Clear Air at 38GHz Propagation through vegetation Impact of loss of GPS signals Propagation Mechanisms Frequencies > 71GHz RAL Core programme RCRU Dissemination of Information Bolton Overlay Project ITU-R Rainscatter Model Freq Sharing between transmitting FSS & FS QinetiQ QinetiQ QinetiQ QinetiQ QinetiQ RAL RAL RAL RAL RAL

Numerical Integration rain scatter method for ITU-R Rec.452 RAL

Broadband Measurements
Long-term measurements of xDSL broadband installations Short-term measurements of PLT installations

effects on HF systems?

Typical ADSL measurement

9 - 450kHz with a characteristic hump

Current research portfolio ...

Airborne VHF Radio Direction Flying Platform Mobile VCE Ionosondes Programme Mobile Phone Health Effects RA/NATS Mobile VCE PPARC DTI

www.mthr.org.uk/ Airborne DF Platform

4th generation mobile systems Software Based Systems Networks and Services Wireless Access

Task Groups

Mobile and Terrestrial Propagation

Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems

Propagation Factors Governing Terrestrial Fixed Service Outages at and above 13GHz

Task Group:

Mobile and Terrestrial Propagation

Vegetation & Multipath

The effects of trees in multipath modelling for 3G can not be neglected A new model for tree scattering Y Nechayev & C.C.Constantinou, University of Birmingham 2 transmitter locations 2 receivers multiple antennas

A typical Network Analyser measurement, shows strong multipath components

Vegetation & Multipath

Paths between Tx1 and Rx1 are shown significant scatterers can be identified from the geometry results for individual trees are compared with predictions a tree model produced for ray tracing applications

Propagation in Buildings
Yi Huang, University of Liverpool

Real buildings are measured 400 MHz to 3 GHz

Large variability in material parameters Data on building materials is limited

Research topics: building entry loss in-building propagation

Propagation in Buildings
The multipath return is analysed to determine its most likely cause

Can determine: number of material layers layer thickness permittivity of each layer conductivity of each layer

Channel Sounders
University of Bristol - Medav RUSK BRI sounder 1910-1930MHz & 2110-2130MHz
6.4 ms excess delay (~2km) 45 polarisation +40dBm transmit power Fixed RX, Mobile TX

Array Antenna

Channel Impulse Response & Azimuth of multipath components along a route

Terrain Databases
BT Exact - Automated generation of coastal zone data from GTOPO 30 arc sec data

The Coastal Zone is defined as land less than 100m high and within 50km of the sea. Applications are in ITU-R propagation models. For example ITU-R P1546

GTOPO 30

Terrain Databases
Some editing required - especially for inland seas not at 0m ASL!

BT Exact visual editing tool.

Ray Tracing
Ray tracing package developed for local multi-point distribution coverage planning Uses Mobile & Terrestrial TG 3D Building Database format & Databases Generates path loss and multipath data between all potential sites Recent work to include Diffraction effects

Rapid Pipeline Development Tool

Malvern

Ray Tracing
Example application- IST Embrace Project

3D building and terrain databases

RPD propagation tool

User, hub and cost model parameters

Cell designer and optimiser

From Embrace Workshop

Task Group:
Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems
radio systems, radar, navigation and radiolocation effects of extreme space weather on propagation ground wave effects
Areas for research include e.g. adaptive and frequency agile MF/HF communications digital modulation methods higher data rates improvement of spectrum utilisation impact of PLT and DSL technologies trans-ionospheric effects on satellite-to-satellite and satelliteto-ground systems (e.g. GPS and GALILEO)

Validation of Total Electron Content Measurements

Ionospheric effects on many radio systems are dependent on the total electron content (TEC) along the ray path Discrepancies between different measurements is studied under COST271 Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) signals and Navy Ionospheric Monitoring System (NIMS) satellites are used

The plot shows a comparison of GPS TEC measurements at Chilbolton by the RAL group with NIMS observations by the Aberystwyth group, showing general agreement (except one outlier)

Multi-instrument data analysis system (MIDAS)

Input:
Output:

GPS signals received on the ground (phase & time delay) Space-based LEO GPS receivers Advantages of using GPS:
4-D images (movies) of electron concentration or TEC
No need to deploy any equipment Continuous 5 years of free data supplied over the internet

TEC measurements using MIDAS

Kp 5 4

Electron concentration (x1011 m-3) Vertical total electron content in TECUs (x1016 m-2)

Vertical TEC (left) and electron concentration cross section (right) obtained from MIDAS inversion of GPS data Europe 14 July, 1800 UT

The images shown were obtained from the centre frame of a one hour 4-D inversion movie

HF propagation
Off-great circle HF propagation: measurements of gross deviations of ionospherically propagated HF signals development of ionospheric models with ray tracing studies development of rules to estimate its influence on communications links, radiolocation systems and OTH radars building the rules into software for use with current prediction software Cause: localised, time varying, enhancements in the electron density distribution of the high latitude ionosphere model of the convecting patches and arcs of enhanced electron density has been built good agreement the simulated and experimental measurements

Propagation along mid-latitude trough

Over 1 years measurements of trough from Uppsala to Leicester Measured: direction of arrival time of flight delay spread Doppler spread The direction of arrival and time of flight characteristics were used to validate Diurnal variation of Doppler spread and improve current trough models Delay and Doppler spread are important for HF digital communication systems (e.g. DRM)
on a 10 MHz signal received over the Uppsala - Leicester path during winter (black curve) and summer (green curve).

Residual height variation of F2

Practical Implications of Long Term Trends in the Critical Frequency and the Height of the F2 Layer above Troms (70N, 19E)
Many HF propagation tools based on CCIR ionogram characteristics database CCIR database (Oslo coefficients) measured at ionosondes worldwide in 1954 to 1958 and in 1964 Lesser problem for URSI 88 coefficients (1975-1979) ITU-R propagation tools reliant on old CCIR (Oslo) database will yield ground range errors ~ 100km per hop (c. 2000) CCIR (and URSI 88) datasets may need to be revised

Trend in hmF2 from 1950 to 2000 is -4.16 km per decade

Radio-Wave Scintillation

Scintillation due to ionospheric irregularities can cause severe degradation to radio systems, including GPS operations. An interest group has been established under COST271 to investigate the problem over northern Europe. Experimental results from observations at VHF for several years at sub-auroral, auroral and polar locations by the University of Wales, Aberystwyth group have been presented as a contribution to the study

Ionospheric Propagation Group

Interactive foF2,
MUF(3000)F2, TEC maps across Europe and associated archive database

TEC plots for each European

observational location and associated archive database

Ionospheric long-term
prediction and short-term forecasting computational tools

http://ionosphere.rcru.rl.ac.uk/

Task Group:
Propagation Factors Governing Terrestrial Fixed Service Outages at and above 13GHz
establish reason for outages assess possible improvements in specific attenuation path reduction factor examine rain duration statistics update the UK Rain Grid assess sleet as a contributor revise models

UK Rain Map
Rain maps are generally derived from Met Office data Met Office and RA requirements may differ:
the intensity and duration of rain events is of high priority to radio users all precipitation, not only that which reaches the ground, is required for propagation prediction The RA supports a rain research activity at RAL using the Chilbolton radar

Transportable Rain Radar

The Chilbolton radar has a long range, but is fixed (near Andover) A portable dish is used to make measurements at a site in Scotland
Operates at 3 GHz Commissioned July 01 Uses DSP to combat low
antenna gain

Transportable Rain Radar

Existing microwave fixed links are monitored
(shown as short lines)

link performance is correlated with the meteorological data from the rain radar at St Andrews
(beam width shown by long V-lines) The results are used to develop and improve propagation prediction software used in fixed link assignment

Transportable Radar Data

February 7, 2002 Cold - 2 - 6 Sleet The performance of the microwave links during the same periods shows increased attenuation when sleet is present on the link March 10 2002 Temperatures between -2 and 1 with sleet and snow

New technologies
Examples:
UWB, software defined radio frequency selective structures (FSS), smart antennas, MIMO high altitude platforms (HAP), micro-satellites fixed wireless access, ad hoc and adaptive networks, mesh networks new propagation scenarios convergence, e.g. digital radio and television coexistence with non-radio systems, EMC and transmitter/receiver immunity issues metrics for spectrum efficiency