Monitoring of HF spectral occupancy in Cyprus

A research grant has recently been awarded for the installation of a dedicated measurement system to provide effective measurement and analysis of HF spectral occupancy in Cyprus. The incentive for this initiative stems out of the well known fact that interference from legitimate users is one of the most common problems encountered in the use of the HF spectrum due to its long range transmission properties. With the congested nature of the HF spectrum, where users with differing requirements compete for diminishing available bandwidth within the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) frequency allocations, there is strong motivation for developing an understanding and models for spectrum usage. Such models find application in both short-term forecasting of channel availability for communications applications, and for long-term prediction of HF spectrum usage for spectrum management and evaluation. In this paper the system and measurement procedures are described.