Radio surveillance spectrum - Role and trends

Communications have become essential to the political, economic and social functioning of our society, which is increasingly focused on the transmission of information between individuals, economic players, managers and regulatory bodies. Recent decades have seen spectacular advances in wireless radio transmission, which is now poised to become the world's leading communications medium, with almost 6 billion cell phone subscriptions by the end of 2011.

At the same time, the volumes of information to be transmitted, driven by advances in digital technologies and the development of remote services, have increased considerably, subjecting radiocommunications system designers to ever-increasing requirements in terms of throughput and spectrum efficiency, and regulators to recurring requests for the allocation of frequencies for new wireless communications services.

The need to regulate the rational and efficient use of the spectrum, "this natural wealth at the service of humanity", and to verify that regulations are properly applied by adequate spectrum monitoring means, has always accompanied the development of radiocommunications.

Radio surveillance, both civil and military, is therefore more than ever a necessity in this context of increasing multiplicity of communications services, marked heterogeneity of radio access techniques, and growing variability and complexity of signals.

Spectrum monitoring is the civilian aspect of spectrum radio surveillance. Electromagnetic intelligence is the ability to monitor the spectrum for military intelligence purposes. Combined with jamming, this type of intelligence is known as electrical communications warfare.