IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2022 - 285

the case, adopt the appropriate remedial actions, and pro -
vide an effective answer in a timely manner. The high
sensitivity of EO sensors, their large footprint, and the geometry
of the RFI scenario make these cases particularly
challenging to solve regardless the RFI source, requiring
extreme technical and operational agility and flexibility to
overcome complex scenarios and challenging (natural and
human) environments far from the prompt support of the
office. Nevertheless, the Portuguese administration's experience
in solving harmful interference to EO missions may
serve as evidence that harmful interference-free spectrum
use is effectively possible (see Figure 9). It is also argued
that the nurturing of both (soft) " civic skills " and (hard)
knowledge building capabilities may well be a pathway to
sustaining the effective role of administrations as the sociotechnical
landscape becomes ever more complex [34],
[35], [36], [37].
With the ever-increasing use of RF spectrum and associated
orbit resources by EO missions as well as by so many
other systems and technologies, one can expect increasing
challenges related to spectrum sharing. Ensuring the sustainability
of outer space, that is to say, the provision of continued
effective access to space, requires the rational and
efficient use of scarce orbital and spectral resources. For
this aim, forward-looking EO mission setups are required
to be increasingly productive, which can happen only by
maximizing their performance by securing their operation
in a harmful interference-free environment. In this sense,
future EO missions need to empower themselves with
the required tools for claiming radio protection to ensure
that the geoscience and remote sensing and meteorological
communities will be able to both address the emergent
challenges and leverage from the opportunities set to present
themselves in the coming decades.
In a nutshell, it is essential to ensure today the full compliance
with applicable regulations and recommendations, take
precautionary measures proportional to the particular susceptibility
of a mission to RFI, and tighten RFI detection and
geolocation requirements as the frequency increases to claim
protection tomorrow by reporting RFI (noting that what is
not reported is assumed not to exist), and administrations
must deploy a full range of capabilities that frame and empower
the smooth activity of EO missions, allowing them to
fulfill their role in engaging grand societal challenges.
(b)
(a)
(c)
FIGURE 7. Aggregation of two interfering TV receiving systems. The (a) impact on EO products, (b) spectral signature of one interference
source, and (c) spectral signature of a second different interference source in the same neighborhood.
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IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2022

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