Spectrum Dashboard

FCC users can browse, review and analyze spectrum data as it relates to broadband deployment by using its Spectrum Dashboard.

Challenges:

Understanding and clearly communicating the myriad of details related to a region or country’s frequency utilization is an arduous task, and it is even more difficult for a large country.  The primary source of information for these details in the United States is included in Part 2 of the FCC rules.  These rules often contain technical language and telecommunication terms that may be difficult for the general public to understand.

The public is increasingly interested in obtaining information about radio frequencies and their utilization.  The FCC transitioned broadcasters onto digital services and auctioned the freed-up spectrum to mobile operators for billions of dollars.  Increasing broadband availability is stated as a national priority.  Steps are underway to provide incentives to broadcasters to free-up additional spectrum.  All these issues are driving the demand for information on spectrum utilization and availability.

Solution:

To effectively organize and present all the information available on spectrum utilization in the U.S., the FCC launched the Spectrum Dashboard in 2010.  As stated on their website — “The Spectrum Dashboard features detailed, user-friendly access to information regarding spectrum bands and licenses, including those that may be suitable for wireless broadband deployment.  It allows users to browse, review and analyze spectrum data as it relates to Abroadband deployment, both at the local level and nationwide.“ In addition to browsing the dashboard, developers can also utAilize the provided APIs to consume the data.

As the prime contractor that supported the FCC in building the Spectrum Dashboard, Computech’s teams helped to prepare the data and develop the application.  This case study highlights our Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capabilities and how our GIS Team supported the spectrum dashboard project.

Computech provided GIS support in two primary areas:

  1. Data preparation.  The Spectrum Dashboard required a snapshot of the spectrum licensed across the U.S., at the county level.  In order to do this, the licensing data collected by the FCC for every spectrum holder had to be utilized.  Additionally, in order to keep the dashboard up to date, the data needed to be refreshed every month.  To automate this process, Computech’s GIS Team created an application to gather the new license data that was created or modified, build an update and applied the update to the database.  For this process to be as automatic as possible, the GIS team created a geospatial-processing pipeline that overlaid relevant features from different layers and checked correctness (topology) of the information that was generated.
  2. Software development.  Computech’s team of geospatial developers created the relevant web services and front end visualizations necessary to support the Spectrum Dashboard website.  As part of the backend system, a set of geospatial web services was created to provide information about spectrum at the county level, using a defined XML schema that the mapping components could then parse and display on the dashboard.  This allowed for greater flexibility in the types of queries that could be performed in the system, while maintaining the capability of displaying the filtered results on a map.  In addition to this, a detailed map display of individual licenses was provided, showing the footprint covered by the license in detail. The development team also created innovative selection tools for querying the system through a mapping interface (geographic query) or by using an interactive frequency band selector to filter by frequency.

From a GIS perspective, the Spectrum Dashboard project generated a set of unique and interesting challenges.  For example, some of the spectrum licenses included very complex geometric relationships, as licenses can be partitioned either geographically or by spectrum range to other licensees (either through purchase or lease).  This created a complex set of geospatial and business rules that the team had to incorporate into the system, while maintaining system performance.

On the display side, the great flexibility of the queries presented a challenge for the map display, as no geographic content could be cached due to the vast number of combinations possible.  The solution that the team came up with was to load the geographies in a client-side mapping component (counties) and create a search engine that would perform the queries and return the filtered information in XML format with the appropriate identifiers so that it could be linked to the counties selected.

Notable Results:

Overall, the project was a success and achieved the level of desired transparency.  The real value of the project was the access given to the user communities, who were able to effectively consume the spectrum license information.  An FCC blogger stated, “The response we’ve received about the Dashboard has been remarkably positive.” In the first eight months of the project there were 200,000 searches conducted (approximately 25,000 p/month or 800 times p/day).

Three months after the Spectrum Dashboard was released, the FCC held a public forum where it assembled a panel of industry experts to solicit feedback on the dashboard and establish priorities for future releases.  The panelists had high praise for the dashboard, and they made statements like “impressive,” “great design and functionality,” “pleasantly surprised,” “customer friendly,” “a model of transparency,” “indispensable” and “very useful.”  The panelists also suggested changes and enhancements for the second release.

The Spectrum Dashboard launched on schedule and on budget.  The site continues to be enhanced with additional features and functions on an ongoing basis; and the FCC has established additional forums to obtain feedback for future enhancements. Operations and maintenance is going smoothly and the automated data updates are working flawlessly.