Achievements in reporting period:

• List of activities organised during reporting period

1.1 CRAF 49 meeting in Jodrell Bank Observatory 5.-6.11.2009 with a preceding executive meeting on 4.11.2009
1.1.1 Summary of the Executive meeting on 4.11.2009 in Wilmslow (near Jodrell Bank):
CRAF employs Laurentiu Alexe as a permanent representative and coordinator for European radio astronomical spectrum management (Frequency Manager = FM). His position is not funded by Radionet but by additional and separate contributions from EISCAT, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland , Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with individual quotes according to an MoU signed by ESF and the contributors. CRAF operates as an ESF Expert Committee and ESF acts as a ‘banker’ for the contributions towards the funding of the FM. A review panel to evaluate the past performance of the CRAF FM was formed consisting of CRAF members Roberto Ambrosini, Willem Baan, Pietro Bolli, Axel Jessner, Peter Thomasson and Neil Williams for the ESF and a questionnaire had been used to provide transparent ratings in the assessment. The panel members met in the Hotel in Wilmslow to discuss their findings and possible consequences. After the initial fact finding meeting the panel discussed their opinion with Laurentiu Alexe. The results were presented to the CRAF plenary meeting on the next day and can be found in the excerpt of the minutes below. 1.1.2 Agenda and Minutes of CRAF 49:
Communications about CRAF and RadioNet Evaluation and contract extension of the CRAF frequency manager ESF update and status of contributions towards CRAF budget (non-payment by some countries) Reports from meetings (CEPT (concerning IRIDIUM, Galileo, UWB), ITU)CRAF attendance at forthcoming meetings Progress report on revision of Rec. RA.1513 Interference at 22 GHz from GSM base transceiver station CRAF Newsletter (contents of Newsletter 21, time path for next issue)Observatory tour and Conference dinner Interference problems in Europe: Reports about developments since the last CRAF meeting Windmills Meteo-Radar 6.6 GHz use (HAPS, in-flight entertainment) and chances of strengthening protection status. ENG (electronic news gathering equipment) Compatibility studies required by CEPT

• technical report on radar spurious emissions (SE21)
• technical study on HAPS (SE19)
• technical study on Iridium intermods on RAS 1.6 GHz band (SE40)
• technical study on MSS CGC 1.6 GHz (SE40)
• technical study on UWB LPR (SE24)
• technical study on UWB SRR 26GHz (SE24)
• cognitive radio
  

1.1.3 Abbreviated Minutes of the 49-th CRAF meeting:
The following CRAF members attend the meeting: L. ALEXE, R. AMBROSINI, V. BEZRUKOVS, P. BOLLI, G. BUTIN, A. DESCHAMPS, A. JESSNER, K. JIRICKA, M. MINGALIEV, C. MONSTEIN, J. SEIRADAKIS, P. THOMASSON, G. WANNBERG, and N. WILLIAMS (ESF liaison). Moreover, at this meeting H. van der Marel (ASTRON) replaces R. MILLENAR. J. De La Noe (Observatoire de Bordeaux) and W. Baan (ASTRON) attend the meeting as invited observers.
Additionally, John Ponsonby joined the open sessions of the meeting as an invited guest. Ari Sorsaniemi (Radio Spectrum Unit, EC) was invited but he was not able to attend this meeting.
Ten CRAF members asked for support from RadioNet to participate in this CRAF meeting. In addition the local organizer’s costs and conference dinner were also paid for by RadioNet.
It is hoped that Ireland will join CRAF as a member in 2010.

Publication code for mitigation issues: H. VAN DER MAREL is the new coordinator, with ALEXE, AMBROSINI, and Baan to draft very simple and clear recommendations to astronomers in order to avoid misunderstandings from our counterparts on mitigation issues. The main objective is to write a few short sentences to make clear, that mitigation techniques can just mitigate only part of RFI but not all and always with a data loss. The document to be produced should make astronomers aware that overoptimistic claims about the effectiveness of new mitigation techniques can result in calls for the removal of spectrum protection for radio astronomy.

A committee for the evaluation of the contract extension of CRAF FM was composed by: AMBROSINI, Baan, BOLLI, JESSNER, THOMASSON, and WILLIAMS. The panel was given a questionnaire containing 18 items that concern different aspects of the work of FM, ranging from personal attitude to knowledge of regulations. The final evaluation has been a general consensus inside the panel that the work of the current FM has had an overall benefit for CRAF and radio astronomy. However, some aspects have not been fully satisfactory and an improvement would be desirable. Another review is to take place before August 2010 with a final decision about an indefinite extension of the FM contract.
CRAF has received an email from Diana Verweij, Head Human Resources and Internal Communications of ASTRON pointing out that since ALEXE has already had two contract extension (the current ending on August 31st 2010), a further temporary extension would be for only one more year. Another aspect highlighted are the liabilities associated with the social benefits to be paid when the contract of ALEXE will be terminated; this cost should be addressed to CRAF resources, even if it was not mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding. At the same time, ALEXE informs CRAF that his workload has increased, to the extent that his health is endangered. ALEXE cannot continue at this level for a long period and he offers to continue until after WRC2012 so that CRAF can be represented at the next WRC. Starting a recruitment in a year’s time and waiting for the new FM to start work, could create temporal gap at this crucial period.
The panel committee suggests to have a new revision before August 2010 to verify that the suggested improvements have taken place. The plenary session approves.
In the meantime, CRAF will increase the efforts to support the workload of ALEXE, sharing the heavy load of the FM among CRAF members. Additionally, the European Observatory Directors will be made aware of the extremely important issue of the spectrum management and they will be asked to give to each CRAF member more time to dedicate to the CRAF activity, supporting in this way the FM work

Neil WILLIAMS (ESF) points out that the fee requested from each Member Institution has not been changed since 2005. CRAF’s financial resources are decreasing year by year and CRAF may be running a deficit in 2011. WILLIAMS suggested to propose a new way of calculating the contribution for each member institution and to increase the size of the contribution in order to have a money reserve.
The amount of money coming from Radionet FP7 is not part of the ordinary CRAF budget. It is limited to only three years and is expressively dedicated to support CRAF members travelling to CRAF and other regulatory meetings, to spectrum monitoring as well as to education about radio astronomical spectrum issues. The terms of the Radionet WP5 do not include the financial support of the FM.
A letter describing the financial situation but also the activities of CRAF in the last 5 years, will be prepared by JESSNER and sent to European Observatory Directories. This letter will be addressed to all countries independently of their having radio astronomical facilities or not. In the same letter, it will be pointed out that some observatories have no resources to contribute to CRAF.

A similar letter will be sent also to Ari Sorsaniemi (Radio Spectrum Unit, EC) asking for support of CRAF with either man-power or money. It is conceivable, that some or all of the CRAF FM’s representative functions could be taken over by the EC Radio Spectrum Unit.

W. Baan announces that he prefers to propose a new recommendation rather than modify ITU-R RA 1513. Modifying the current 1513 may be very dangerous because it could compromise all the other recommendations related to radio astronomy. The new recommendation will give an overview about how the measurements are performed at the radio telescopes. Before next meeting scheduled for June 2010, Baan will send around a draft version of the document.

JESSNER points out that the current CRAF webpage about Windmills contains severe errors and misleading information and should be replaced as soon as possible. He introduces a document entitled “Tall Structures, Wind turbines and radio astronomy stations” (input document CRAF(09)21). The document contains an introduction, general information on Radio Astronomical Sensitivity and Interference levels and finally provides an impact assessment procedure. The document has found a favourable reception by German and Swedish administrations and is intended for the CRAF website.
ALEXE disagrees to put such a document on the CRAF website. It is agreed that the document will be circulated among some CRAF members and they will give their comments to JESSNER. On this issue, it is worthwhile point out that one of the reasons to have next CRAF meeting in Onsala is a proposed public hearing where radio astronomers, representatives of the Swedish administration and of several companies involved in the wind turbine construction are to explain their point of view.

ALEXE describes the document CRAF(09)25 containing a list of compatibility studies required by CEPT, in which CRAF involvement is needed. In particular, a long discussion among many CRAF members follows on the “Impact of unwanted emissions of iridium satellites to radio astronomy stations in the band 1610.6-1613.8 MHz” (Status: ongoing; started in September 2009; Meeting: SE40 (satellites); Next meeting: 24-25 Nov. 2009, ECO Copenhagen).

A very detailed input document (CRAF(09)24) on this issue has been prepared by JESSNER, it contains a lot of information concerning the Leeheim measurement of IRIDIUM. Several CRAF members point out that the content of the document is very well done, however they don’t agree to present it as it is now, because it may give to Iridium lawyers many topics for possible further disputes. In particular, ALEXE suggests to send a simpler input document containing only the CRAF comments to the Leeheim measurement, something similar to the current summary of the document CRAF(09)24.

Members are asked to request their national administrations to support the German proposal on Electronic News Gathering (ENG) equipment, because it contains the necessary protection clauses for radio astronomy.

It is suggested to get in touch with radio astronomy amateurs, their community is very large; one of their representatives will be invited by JESSNER to visit the Effelsberg observatory.

Some radio telescopes in Europe (Ventplis and SRT) will be used both for active and passive service; therefore an action item is established to write some internal guidelines concerning the compatibility between active and passive service inside the same observatory site; people involved are WANNBERG, AMBROSINI, ALEXE, THOMASSON.

For lack of time the following topics scheduled in the agenda have not been discussed: “Meteo-Radar” and “6.6 GHz use (HAPS, in-flight entertainment) and chances of strengthening its protection status (upgrading the allocation)”.\

1.1.4 Meeting for the Spectrum Monitoring Part of WP5 The CRAF spectrum monitoring is one of the activity funded, with 10 Keuro, in the WP5 from the FP7 Radionet programme. This facility consists of a common RFI monitoring scheme for all the EU observatories aimed to: (i) harmonize the RFI monitoring measurements, (ii) coordinate common procedures in reporting interferences to the National Administrations, and (iii) realize a central repository across Europe. The 48th CRAF meeting held in Paris on 14-15 May 2009 has been addressed to be the kick-off meeting on this action. During this a meeting a task force, composed by several CRAF members, was appointed to develop this facility. The task force was also asked to update every semester the CRAF plenary session on the progresses. The task force agreed to split the general issue in two different activities: one to define a protocol for the hardware of the common RFI monitoring system to be adopted at European level, and the other related to develop a RFI data base to collect proofs of interference occurred all over the EU radio observatories.
As far as the hardware, so far we have investigated the different experience already present at European level: the Callisto system developed by C. Monstein, the RFI station available in WSRT (Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope), and that in progress at SRT (Sardinia Radio Telescope). The task force agreed that in order to design a spectrum monitoring facility, the most important aspect is to get clear what are the specifications and even more who is going to use the RFI monitoring system. As soon as the audience is identified, the specifications (frequency range, sensitivity, polarizations, resolution, directivity, continuous monitoring or ad hoc monitoring, permanent or mobile station, duty cycle, positioning, calibration) will be set.

Concerning the data base, a preliminary release, based on MySQL engine, is already available for internal tests at the Cagliari Astronomical Observatory’s network. The current version of database is accessible through simple web pages and accepts manual entries. However, the same structure may be easily updated to be automatically fed directly by the monitoring system. The web pages are mainly used to submit RFI occurrences according to specific input field and to query the data base following some rules as for example frequency range and radio astronomical observatory site. During 2009 several features have been introduced in the database and during first months of 2010 the database will be published in the CRAF website and will be announced to the astronomers community for further external comments.

• Meetings attended – both meetings for NA organisation or meetings on behalf of RadioNet

1.2.1 ITU WP7 meeting Geneva 7.-11.9.2009 (P. Thomasson)
1.2.2 CEPT SE40 meeting Brest (F) 24.-25.9.2009 (A. Jessner, W. Baan)
1.2.3 Meeting of CRAF and IRIDIUM at BnetzA in Mainz (A. Jessner, W. Baan)
1.2.4 CEPT SE40 meeting in Copenhagen 23.-24.11.2009 (A. Jessner, W. Baan)
The last three meetings dealt with IRIDIUM issues where for the first time significant progress has been achieved: IRIDIUM admits to cause RFI in the OH band, they also admit that this is caused by intermodulation in their transmitter and not at the radio telescope, the horizon of radio telescope issue has been resolved and efforts are made to come to a technical solution. However, the previous measurements of the satellite at Leeheim were lacking complete spectral information. Radio astronomy had offered to assist the measurements with our spectrometers, but in the past the offer was not taken up. A renewed measurement campaign with the technical support of radio astronomy may happen in the next year in order to resolve the remaining uncertainties.

Problems / Issues

• * Issues - organisational, administrative or other problems foreseen
  
• -second person to act on WP5 matters for CRAF resolved: Roberto Ambrosini, previous CRAF chair can act in urgent cases when the acting chairman is not available.

• 2.2 Red flags - major problems

2.2.1 Previous report: The travel budget is insufficient to fund full costs of travel of CRAF members to CRAF meetings. A cap of EUR 500,- on individual applications has been introduced in order to stay within the allocated budget. This creates hardships for CRAF members from poorer countries

CRAF has decided to allow the chairman to allocate extra support at his discretion. The situation in some countries (RUS) has improved and we expect not only to stay within our budget projection, but even have a small surplus of about 2KEUR

Forward Look
3.1 Plan for next years – 12 month outlook, more detail in first 6 month (including budget for each planned meeting/workshop)

CRAF has stayed with the budget projections during the last year and as a consequence there are no proposed changes to the long term projections.

3.2 Expected milestones/deliverables

3.2.1 Next CRAF meeting in May 2010 in Onsala (S)
3.2.2 The Third Summer School in Spectrum Management for Radio Astronomy will take place at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan from 31 May to 4 June, 2010. CRAF has pledged to support travel and accommodation, preferably of European students, to that meeting and allocated 12kEUR for that purpose