ITS in Boulder Helps Shape the Future of Spectrum Management at ISART 2026
In August 2026, the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) brought government, industry and academic experts together in Boulder for ISART 2026, the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies, to tackle a challenge that increasingly affects nearly every sector of the economy: how can we dramatically expand the effective capacity of the radio spectrum?
Many Coloradans may not realize that this nationally important work has a home in Boulder. ITS is the science and engineering laboratory of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and conducts research spanning spectrum measurement and monitoring, radio wave propagation, interference analysis, radio access technologies and advanced communications.
ITS Director David Goldstein opened the conference with an analogy to Manhattan. As the island filled, technological advances allowed the city to build upward. Spectrum faces a similar constraint, and the next generation of technologies will need to enable far more intensive and sophisticated use of a finite resource. See his presentation slides. This year’s conference began a multiyear exploration of what that next major technological breakthrough could look like.
The discussions centered on three interconnected areas: the data foundations required for artificial intelligence and machine learning, real world applications of increasingly autonomous spectrum operations, and the hardware needed to make those systems possible. Participants examined fundamental questions about what data AI systems need, how spectrum data should be collected and standardized, what information is currently missing, and how government, industry and researchers can share data more effectively. Sessions also explored how AI and machine learning could allow wireless systems to sense changing spectrum conditions, make decisions and adapt dynamically while avoiding harmful interference.
The conference then pushed those ideas toward practical implementation. Researchers discussed cognitive radio, AI optimized sensing networks, interference classification, physics informed machine learning, advanced antennas, reconfigurable radio frequency hardware and the testbeds needed to develop AI enabled Radio Access Networks on the path toward 6G. Goldstein’s opening presentation emphasized that achieving truly scalable autonomous spectrum operations will require the integration of three elements: strong data foundations, intelligent operations, and hardware capable of responding to real world spectrum conditions. The result could be wireless systems that do not simply operate within fixed allocations, but increasingly understand their spectrum environment and adapt to use it more efficiently.
CO-LABS is proud to support and champion the work of ITS and the researchers who make Colorado an important center for telecommunications science. ISART also provides an unusually accessible window into that expertise: presentation slides from many of the 2026 sessions are now available through the conference agenda, along with the full ISART 2026 video playlist, giving Colorado businesses, researchers and technology leaders an opportunity to explore where advanced spectrum research is headed and the potential opportunities for collaboration.
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