Spectrum policy issues in wireless education programs

While the author has spent most of his career as a practitioner of spectrum policy in both government entities and the private sector, he has also been involved in engineering education in spectrum policy both at MIT and at Virginia Tech. Spectrum policy issues can have a major impact on the practical aspects of which wireless technologies move from the pages of IEEE journal articles to operational systems. Just because technology “X” can be physically built to operate in frequency band “Y” does not mean that it can be practical in non-experimental use or within the professional career lives of those developing it. In all countries, for better or for worse, spectrum use is probably the most highly regulated technology of all the technologies within the IEEE community. Wireless regulations can have just as large an impact on system design as Maxwell’s Equations - although wireless regulations can be changed over time and Maxwellian constraints are more binding. Exposing wireless technology students to these issues is thus a valid goal in undergraduate and graduate programs in the wireless area.