Space-based Spectrum Sharing

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed, which has been installed on the International Space Station (ISS) to research new ways to use radio spectrum more efficiently. This system, developed under the Communications, Navigation, and Networking Configurable Testbed (CoNNeCT) project at NASA’s John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, is being used to test the capabilities of software defined radios (SDR).

Unlike a traditional radio with a fixed set of communication protocols built into its hardware, an SDR has software incorporated into the device that can be reconfigured in almost any way and at any time simply with an update to its programming. This allows the same radio to adjust it modulation, coding and data rate on the fly to adapt to changing radio channel characteristics within the allocated spectrum required for a particular type of operation, such as transmitting video, data, or voice communications. NASA is partnering with other government agencies, industry, and academia to use the SCaN Testbed as a unique space-based platform to test new radio communication techniques and protocols. Since being installed on the ISS in 2012, more than 2,600 hours of experiments have been conducted testing a total of 149 individual communication protocols. Some of the early results of these real-world tests have already been used to determine the types of communications technologies that can be utilized across NASA’s wide range of missions. In the future, spacecraft employing SDR radios will be able to be reconfigured with the latest and most efficient technologies that will allow them to adapt to disruptions and to more effectively share the same spectrum. The results of this research have and will continue to benefit agencies across the federal government and the private sector as all spectrum users learn to adapt to rising demand for this finite resource.


Space-based Spectrum Sharing