NOAA GOES DCS UPLINK SPECTRUM SHARING

Abstract

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) Data Collection System (DCS) receives environmental data from approximately 28,000 Data Collection Platforms (DCPs) that transmit up to the GOES spacecraft in the Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) band between 401.7 Mega-Hertz (MHz) and 402.1 MHz. The radio spectrum around 402 MHz is also available to commercial satellite companies and several have recently begun using the spectrum. There are questions regarding whether the shared use of the spectrum by small satellites may pose an interference problem to the NOAA DCS program and if so how such issues might be mitigated. This paper discusses some of the pertinent technical issues regarding the performance of the DCS system, reviews some of the known commercial satellite systems sharing the spectrum and briefly discusses some of the issues that spectrum sharing creates.