§278t Advanced communications research activities

Summary

The Director must run a measurement research program for advanced communications technologies. The Director must work with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information, the Director of the National Science Foundation, and other federal agency heads as needed. The research can cover things like radio frequency emissions and interference, advanced antenna arrays and AI for antennas, AI for Internet of Things and immersive tech, network sensing and monitoring, spectrum flexibility, optical and quantum communications, system security, public safety communications, and resilient IoT for advanced manufacturing, plus other areas the Director finds needed. The Director may build and manage testbeds with the private sector and agencies, while avoiding duplicate testbeds. The Director must ask for ongoing input from agencies and private stakeholders through workshops and must bring together industry, colleges, nonprofits, and federal labs to make and update coordinated technical roadmaps. The Director must also run a national network of government, academic, and commercial test capabilities called the National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASCTN), in coordination with the Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and other agency heads. NASCTN must help share expert people, modeling and simulation, lab space, and test facilities to meet national spectrum needs. It must support measuring electromagnetic propagation and radio system behavior, do telecommunications research for government needs, develop test methods and interference guidelines, run interference tests to study effects, research ways to improve interference tolerance, flexibility, agility, and mitigation, and carry out other activities the Director finds necessary.