Spectrum Challenges and Opportunities for Weather Observations (November 10, 2020)

Workshop Topic:  Commercial applications for wireless communication must operate in harmony with scientific uses, and weather prediction is an example of a nationally vital activity that is dependent upon access to the radio spectrum. Therefore, this workshop will explore the need for weather sensing research, including the use of advanced radar signal processing techniques for remote sensing of the atmosphere and severe weather. Workshop participants will be asked to discuss and quantify the effects of wireless communications (wireless Lan, 5G, and 6G) on weather sensing and examine the current and future needs and challenges of spectrum researchers. Given the similarities of the radar systems used for FAA Air Traffic Management (ATM) and the weather radars, consideration of the issues relevant to the ATM systems will also be explored by the workshop collaborators Oklahoma University, MIT/Lincoln Labs, and UCSD.

Workshop Goals:  This workshop specifically aims to explore and address the following: a) how to preserve the one-week look ahead weather prediction capability, which is highly dependent on space-based radiometric sensing of water vapor in the clouds just above 20 GHz, (b) discuss the impact of WiFi at 5+GHz  and spectrum sharing at 3.2 GHz on ground-based national weather radars that operate in the spectrum below 6 GHz (S,C Bands), MPAR phased array radar development, as well as Advanced Technology Demonstrator (ATD) radar operating at 3.0-3.5GHz, (c) understand the trade-offs in using 6G 30+ GHz data links for weather sensing, and (d) explore the development of techniques to identify 6G interference and develop adaptive waveforms to minimize and mitigate deleterious effects.