IARU Frequency Coordination
August 28, 2025
Author: Levente Buzas VA7QF
We’re thrilled to announce a major milestone for MARMOTSat: the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) has completed frequency coordination for our mission, following endorsement by Canada’s national Amateur radio organization, the Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC). This community-led step provides us with frequencies in our Amateur-satellite allocations of interest, endorses our requests for spectrum and emissions, and facilitates us to operate harmoniously and respectfully alongside other Amateur satellites. We would like to extend a thank you to the IARU, the Satellite Advisor Hans PB2T, and the Coordination Panel for their volunteer efforts and stewardship which enables projects like ours to exists, and and keeps the Amateur-satellite community thriving in an age where there is an ever increasing extent of commercial encroachment on Amateur spectrum.
The coordination confirms our use of Amateur-satellite service frequencies for Telemetry, Tracking & Command (TT&C), a digipeater to support the community, as well as various beacons (CW telemetry, DVB-S2 video, and science). It also records our planned launch window (June 2026), the Canadian licensing administration, and a sun-synchronous LEO mission profile. Coordination sets clear expectations for how and where we transmit, reduces interference risk, and signals to other operators what to expect once we’re on orbit, following a long tradition of self regulation in the Amateur radio community.
Now that IARU coordination is in hand, we will move into the preparation and submission of additional regulatory filings:
International Telecommunication Union (ITU) — Advance Publication Information (API): We’ll submit API data to place our planned satellite network characteristics on record at the ITU. API is the first step in the international notification process.
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) — CPC-2-6-02 Space Segment Spectrum Licence: We’ll complete the Canadian space-segment spectrum licensing package under CPC-2-6-02 for MARMOTSat, to have it become an authorized and approved Canadian satellite.
Note: IARU coordination is not itself a government licence. Licences are issued by administrations (ISED for Canada), and the ITU process provides international recognition for the assignments.
