The government has tasked the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with investigating options that would allow it to release bandwidth in the current air traffic radar spectrum allocation – in the ‘S Band’ between 2.7 and 2.9 GHz – to help meet its aspiration to free up 500 MHz of public spectrum by 2020.
In response, Cambridge technology firm Aveillant has been awarded a contract by the CAA to demonstrate the ability of its Holographic Radar technology to provide a spectrum-efficient alternative to S-band radar.
At present each radar typically has its own frequency assignment, but Aveillant hopes to demonstrate a surveillance system that can enable all air traffic control radars in the UK to operate through a single frequency assignment, separate from the ‘S Band’.
The firm’s radars use the L band frequency as opposed to the highly congested S band, used by current air traffic control radars and highly sought after...