FAA seeks industry input on radio frequency interference detection

The FAA wants information on technology that can detect and locate radio frequency interference affecting the National Airspace System. From October 13 to 15 the agency will meet potential vendors to examine systems that monitor aviation frequencies at airports, in terminal areas and along en route paths, according to an agency notice.

The capability could cover domestic and oceanic operations and involve equipment on the ground and in the air. The FAA said it is interested in networks of sensors spread across wide areas that feed readings back to a single point for analysis. It is reviewing technologies at different stages of maturity and weighing whether to buy the capability as a service instead of a system it owns.

Some sessions at the October event will be classified, and selected vendors may hold separate meetings. Technical presentations are planned, along with discussion of possible acquisition approaches. No deployment schedule has been announced, and the notice does not say who would receive alerts from the system.

The FAA began collecting industry feedback before the release of a recent Government Accountability Office report, though the proposed system would address several monitoring gaps federal investigators identified. The GAO found the agency did not continuously monitor certain spectrum-related threats and typically looked into incidents only after they were reported.