US military to test potential of spectrum sharing for wireless signals

MIT Technology Review : Commercial wireless bandwidths are limited and filling up quickly. Much of the noncommercial bandwidth is reserved for military use—primarily for radar—and is relatively unused. Next week, the US military will perform tests to see if its radar frequencies can be shared in the same way that unused TV frequencies are currently being shared with cell phone service providers. If such sharing is possible, it will probably be limited to only certain users, such as hospitals, utilities, or law enforcement. One of the military’s concerns is that positions of radar-using ships could be tracked by other users on the same frequency. But there are ways of masking that information. In addition, the more nonmilitary users that are using the same frequency, the more difficult it will be to identify a particular signal source. If the tests go well, the next step will be for the Federal Communications Commission to formally define a rule for spectrum sharing, a process that could take more than a year.