Introducing the National Spectrum Grid

Airwave Research now offers a National Spectrum Grid Excel as part of a license. This is available for both our 3-month and 1-year license. We believe our product is superior on many levels from other spectrum grid products on the market. Here is why:

It’s very lightweight (less than 10 megabytes) and fast

When we set out to build the export, we wanted the export to feel as fast as the web-based platform. Using an Excel template which was reliant on lookups, reference functions, and cell-formatting rules created bloatware that we benchmarked around 200-300 megabytes. Just opening the file took about a minute, and the app frequently lagged.

So we took a unique approach to building the grid which involved populating the cells ahead of time so our file is significantly smaller. It is extremely performant even on the smallest machines. The export with all counties and all bands (low, mid, and high band) is less than 10 megabytes.

(Raw data is available for download separately on the Airwave Research platform.)

Updated daily

Our real-time sync engine reads from the FCC every single day, which allows us to keep all of our data up-to-date constantly. The national spectrum export will read from the same data source.

Low, mid, and high bands in one export

We included mobile bands from 600 MHz to 47 GHz in one single export. We didn't see a need to break up the export into multiple files, as we believe that the user should have access to all the data in one place.

Direct links to the Airwave Research platform

Our web platform complements the Excel grid by providing detailed information about licenses, including geographic footprints, frequency ranges, buildout requirements, and entity contact information. To enhance usability, we’ve embedded direct links to the platform within the Excel grid.

In our band plan, you can hover over blocks to view key data about each block and its associated license. For each county listed in the Excel grid, there’s a deep link that takes you directly to the band plan view for that specific county.

Excel’s limitations mean that each cell can only display one owner, even in bands like 2.5 GHz, where licenses don’t align with county borders. Our web platform addresses this by showing all owners, providing a more complete view.

Bands are organized by how they are used (3GPP)

We organized spectrum by bands instead of showing in ascending frequency. This means that you can see the whole band together, as opposed to navigating large gaps between the uplink and downlink with FDD spectrum.

With our approach to pre-populating the Excel grid, we reached file sizes about 20 times smaller than our competitor while providing microwave and millimeter bands in the same export. The exported data is updated daily and includes direct links to the web platform.

The sheet also includes key metadata about counties and bands. County rows include important information about the county including population, square kilometers, and cross-reference to all FCC boundaries (PEA, CMA, etc.). Block columns include information about NR band overlap, lower frequency, upper frequency, and whether the block is uplink, downlink, or both.

This update is immediately available to all existing Airwave Research customers. If you are interested in an Airwave license to access the National Spectrum Grid, please reach out.

To download the file, go to the Exports module and select the National Spectrum Grid tab.