Spectrum assessment tool

Mass Consultants has successfully completed field measurements using the Autonomous Interference Monitoring System (AIMS), following two years of research and development. AIMS has been designed to assist Ofcom with its spectrum liberalisation and trading policies by measuring signal and interference levels autonomously in occupied regions of spectrum. William Webb, head of R&D at Ofcom, said: “When AIMS was first conceived, it was far from clear as to whether it would be technically possible. We now have a system being deployed unattended for days, which provides us with invaluable data about the quality of the radio spectrum from 100MHz up to 10GHz.” Specially developed algorithms separate the carrier, interference and noise signals and analyse the features of each, presenting the results in a multitude of different ways to allow assessment of channel throughput capacity. The system has been used in a nationwide survey of all the major radiocommunications services, measuring usage of and interference to FM radio, DAB, DVB, GSM, 3G, WLAN, licence exempt short range devices and others. The results will be of use to planners and regulators who wish to understand the radio environment without interrupting incumbent services. Other features of the system include automatic modulation recognition, easy to use test scripting and analysis software and an automatic report generator.