IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014 - 68

Technical committees
Sidharth MiSra, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
Paolo de MatthaeiS, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Passive Remote Sensing and Radio Frequency
Interference (RFI): An Overview of Spectrum
Allocations and RFI Management Algorithms

Introduction to "Technical
Committees"
by John Kerekes, Vice President of
Technical Activities
Each issue we feature one of our Technical Committees to share with the
community their mission, objectives,
and activities. Here we present a contribution from the Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing (FARS) Technical Committee. As explained in the article, FARS represents the interests of our community in regards to use of the radio frequency
spectrum. Please contact the Chair or Co-Chair (authors of the article)
if you have an interest in participating in this Technical Committee.

1.0 IntroductIon
he Frequency Allocations in Remote Sensing (FARS)
Technical Committee (TC) was formed in 2000 as
a means for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Society (GRSS) community to discuss spectrum management issues that affect the remote sensing field and
to provide a unified interface to the regulatory world.
Presently, FARS members include 84 engineers and scientists representing government, academic and industrial entities across 10 countries.
Spectrum management has become an important
issue for many members of the GRSS. Increasingly over
the past decade, members of GRSS engaged in passive
and active microwave remote sensing have been coping
with corrupt measurements due to radio frequency interference (RFI). Accordingly, the charge of the FARS TC is:
To interface between the GRSS membership and the
frequency regulatory process, which includes educating the

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2320879
Date of publication: 24 June 2014

membership of current frequency management issues, processes and influencing regulatory efforts by organizing a
GRSS response. We coordinate GRSS technical recommendations and responses to regulatory organizations. We track
current and future user spectrum requirements, investigate
potential interference issues and promote the development of
RFI detection and mitigation techniques.
As the usable spectrum gets increasingly crowded,
the GRSS FARS community has taken a pro-active
approach to deal with interfering sources. It is important not only to keep track of the constantly changing
frequency allocations but also develop active interference detection and mitigation approaches to measure
usable data in our spectrum of interest. The next section
summarizes frequency allocation issues and interference observed by passive remote sensing instruments.
Section 3 briefly describes the interference detection
algorithms developed by the GRSS community, before
summarizing recent and upcoming FARS activities in
the last section.
2.0 overvIew on Frequency AllocAtIon
At an international level, use of the radio frequency
spectrum is regulated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Changes to the Radio Regulations are adopted at the World Radiocommunication
Conferences (WRC), held every three to four years. At
every WRC, a worldwide table of allocations is agreed
upon by the member administrations of the ITU, and is
established among the different ITU regions.
Allocations are meant to accommodate one or
more services within a shared frequency bands by
coordinating their respective applications to minimize harmful reciprocal interference. Frequency allocations offer users an overview of the Radio Frequency
environment and guidelines under which to operate in
each particular band. Compliance with the ITU table
is only required at an international level, while each
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2014