Custom Searching/IFIC Processing

IFIC Processing is the task of identifying any new filings within an IFIC which have the ability to cause interference to a particular administrations networks. This is a good example of showing the effectiveness of custom searching. Click here for a movie demonstration of this example.

• Let us assume that we have two satellite networks, SAT-A and SAT-B at 30 degrees E and 40 degrees E respectively. Let us also assume that we have frequencies filed in both the C-Band and Ku-Band. In each new IFIC which is published we need to find each network which is within a particular orbital range to us and also has a frequency overlap with us. In order to do this we can construct a custom search.

• Firstly we need to identify the criteria which will make up our search. Let us list the criteria below:

  • We only want to retrieve coordination request information since objection is not required until this stage (apart from for some NGSO networks)

  • We only want to retrieve information which has been filed in this IFIC (this is required since the data in the IFICs also includes any previously filed data for each network)

  • We only want to retrieve networks which are within +/- 10 degrees from our networks, so the orbital range 20 degrees E to 50 degrees E.

  • We only want to retrieve networks which have a frequency overlap with our networks. Assume we have filed for the frequency ranges: 3400-4200 MHz, 5750-6400 MHz in the C-Band and 10.95-11.2 GHz, 11.45-11.7 GHz, 12.5-12.75 GHz and 14.0-14.5 GHz in the Ku-Band.

  • We want the custom search to return information on the satellite networks found, their orbital position, their administration and their intergovernmental organisation.

• The following custom search has been setup as seen below:

• Note that in the custom search we have let the "Assignment IFIC Number" = "(prompt)". This means we will be prompted for the number to be used every time the custom search is run. This allows us to use the same custom search on every IFIC and specify the current IFIC number when running the search. The custom search was then run on IFIC 2480, and the results can be seen below:

• We can now perform any subsequent searches on this data as we wish. Below the "Frequency Range Merged (MHz)" search has been performed on one of the satellite networks so that we can precisely identify the overlapping frequency assignments:

• These results can then be exported to any csv, txt or doc editor for printing or editing.

In order to see how every step of this process was achieved, please view the video of this example which can be found here.