Spectrum Management Data Bases

The Office of Telecommunications in the Department of Commerce (U.S.) supports the Executive Office of the President in the management of federal use of the radio spectrum. A portion of this support is in the maintenance of spectrum-related data filles and associated computer programs. The files describe the expected signal environment, both directly and indirectly. Several of the files are in the form of records of frequency assignments to radio stations in specific geographic locations or areas. Other files in the data base describe physical attributes of the environment, such as the terrain and the expected man-made noise level. The computer programs associated with the data base have been developed to maintain the files, to retrieve data from them, and to compute information based on the data retrieved. This paper offers brief descriptions of the files contained in the data base. It also contains a tabulation of the engineering aids programmed for the computer that utilize those files in the automated data base. A short discussion of the information retrieval capability available is given. Finally, there are discussions of needed improvements to the data base system, i. e., costs and savings.