Green Bank Observatory Okays Limited Wi-fi at GBEMS

Like cell phones, wi-fi has always been a bit of a tricky question in Green Bank, in Pocahontas County, WV.  That’s because Green Bank is the home of the Green Bank Radio Observatory and sits smack dab in the middle the National Radio Quiet Zone, or NRQZ.  The NRQZ was established in 1958 and is designed to protect sensitive radio signals received by the GBO and the National Security Agency’s Sugar Grove station in nearby Pendleton County. Because of its proximity to the GBO, the Green Bank Elementary Middle School is the only school in the county that doesn’t have access to wi-fi.  That is, until now. Chris De Pree, Assistant Director for Spectrum Management at the NRAO in Charlottesville gives us some background.

“The rules about wi-fi have been consistently applied from our end,” said De Pree. “When people have reached out and said ‘Can we install a router’, we have said no. And when people haven’t reached out and have simply installed a router, we didn’t know about it and there wasn’t a whole lot we could do.

De Pree said an analysis of the 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi band showed similar levels of RFI or radio frequency interference in Green Bank, comparable to what you find in Charlottesville.  While they have been able to have good scientific productivity in that band, he said they also wanted to try to be accommodating to the school.

“Over the past few years especially with the expansion of use of wi-fi in schools, we wanted to reconsider this topic,” said De Pree, “because the school had made a request and really was anxious to try to get something in place for their students. And we wanted to, in good faith, consider that and see what was possible.”

De Pree says the 2.4 gigahertz band will allow for wi-fi access in all the classrooms at the school.  And the GBO will also open up that band for the community’s use beyond the school grounds, according to Tony Remijen, Interim Director of the GBO.

“What we’re going to ask the community for is to say work with us; you can easily run the 2.4 gigahertz, but we’re going to give you a process to turn off the 5 and 6 gigahertz because those frequencies ranges on the GBT [Green Bank Telescope] is actually pretty clean and we’d like to keep it that way,” said Remijen. “In addition to providing the 2.4 gigahertz to the school which they are going to be able to use with all their devices, really reaching out to the community saying 2.4 is great and you should be able to use it throughout the community. But at the same time, help us by turning off your 5 and 6, because it’s really not needed; in terms of performance if you turn off your 5 and 6 you’re not going to see any difference in your performance whether you’re streaming, or you’re doing homework, or you’re answering your email.”

De Pree says they’re working with the information technology folks in the school system and will request that the wi-fi at the school be turned off when school in not in session.   That probably won’t apply beyond the school grounds, but it will lessen the RFI at the site.  Remijen says this will not be a contract or Memorandum of Understanding [MOU] between the GBO and Green Bank EMS, but rather an agreement with the Green Bank community.

“It’s for everyone within that 10 mile radius that has [previously] been restricted,” said Remijen. “This is for the community to utilize at their discretion.”

But don’t expect the school to be come a wi-fi hot spot.  Remijen said it will likely be password protected and have a level of security built in to protect the privacy of the students and faculty. He says the GBO is ready to help with the set up if asked to do so.

There are other sources of RFI in this particular band, such as Sirius XM at 2.3 gigahertz.  So the GBO is accustomed to working around such interference, but wi-fi is still a bit of an unknown.

“We don’t know what is actually going to happen once we turn on wi-fi in the school and in the community, but we’re going to track it and watch and see what happens,” said Remijen.  “This is primarily what we do as scientists; we do experiments [and] this is one of the experiments we’re trying. Once we start taking data over a couple of years and we bring up spectrum monitor to do monitoring up here again next year to see what it looks like, we’ll see the impact.”

“We hope the impact is low and what we are most hopeful for is that the community and the school gets what they need to continue on their missions.”

Remijen and De Pree presented their proposal to the Pocahontas County Board of Education at their meeting on August 5^th.  They are hoping that the new wi-fi access for GBEMS will be in place by this fall.