National Radio Dynamic Zones: Looking Back – Looking Forward

Overview

The NSF-supported NRDZ Research Partnership and Workshop Series is pleased to announce an in-person workshop to be held in conjunction with the 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on RFID, taking place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 15–16, 2026 (Monday–Tuesday). The first day will feature a private tour of the Very Large Array in nearby Socorro, followed by a second day of talks, panels, open discussions, paper presentations, and poster sessions. Thanks to generous support from the National Science Foundation, a limited number of travel grants will be available to help offset the cost of attending and participating in this capstone event at a truly historic location.

Call for Papers

The wireless spectrum is a vital natural resource that impacts our lives in numerous ways. While it is often associated with mobile broadband, its significance extends to various domains such as weather forecasting, climate science, astronomy, space exploration, and civil/military navigation. The escalating demand for spectrum has led to a corresponding increase in congestion as these vastly different services converge to utilizing many of the same bands. Consequently, conflict over spectrum has arisen between services utilizing adjacent or overlapping bands, resulting in the potential for harmful interference. 

To unlock the full potential of 6G and future wireless systems, while ensuring our continued Earth and space exploration, it is crucial to ensure effective and efficient active/passive spectrum coexistence. The vision is to enable seamless spectrum sharing among disparate users based on time, frequency, space, geography, and geometry, without creating detrimental interference. The past five years have seen progress towards the design and implementation of National Radio Dynamic Zones as an at-scale testbed to facilitate coexistence research across disparate spectrum holders. This workshop aims to provide a venue for disseminating new and exciting research findings, to bring together contributors from academia, government, and industry to explore practical implementations and applications, and to identify key technical and policy challenges for future exploration. Panel discussions and open forums will facilitate interactive exploration and ideation, catalyzing ongoing efforts in spectrum coexistence.

Topics of Interest

This workshop seeks novel, unique, transformative papers covering various aspects of active and passive spectrum sharing and coexistence, and their application to NRDZ, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

  1. Spectrum Sensing and Spectrum Decision Techniques for passive-active sharing
  2. Digital Twins for passive-active Spectrum Sharing and Management
  3. Spectrum Resource Allocation and Coexistence Mechanisms for passive-active Coexisting Networks, Including Between Satellite and Terrestrial Networks
  4. Experimental zones and testbeds
  5. Coexistence Mechanisms for Satellite Transmissions and Active or Passive Terrestrial Systems
  6. Coexistence Mechanisms and Strategies for Active and Passive Systems
  7. Interference Management and Mitigation for Radio Astronomy and Remote Sensing
  8. Interference Avoidance and Coordination Strategies in Satellite and Terrestrial Networks
  9. Spectrum, Propagation, and Interference Measurements and Modeling for Shared Spectrum
  10. Cooperative and Collaborative Spectrum Sharing Techniques

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should present novel contributions and demonstrate a clear relevance to advancing the state-of-the-art in active/passive spectrum sharing and coexistence. All papers should be submitted via EDAS. Full instructions on how to submit papers are provided on the IEEE RFID 2026 Call for Papers page. All full-length papers will be peer-reviewed by a technical program committee, and selected based on their technical quality, originality, and relevance to the workshop. Authors of accepted papers will be published in IEEEXplore.

Submission Options

Authors may choose to submit either:

  • a full-length (6 pages maximum, including figures and references) manuscript, which will be peer-reviewed and, if accepted, published in IEEE Xplore, or
  • a one-page abstract for a poster presentation at the workshop, which will not be archived.

To be included in the IEEE Xplore proceedings, at least one author of an accepted manuscript must register for the workshop.

Full-length manuscripts may be submitted via EDAS here: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34257&track=134202

Poster abstracts may be submitted via EDAS here: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=34257&track=134203

Important Dates

  • Full-Length Paper Submission Deadline: FEB 20 2026
  • Decision Notification: APR 20 2026
  • Poster-only Abstract Submission: APR 27 2026
  • Camera-Ready Paper Submission: MAY 12 2026
  • Workshop Dates:
    • June 15, 2026 – VLA Tour
    • June 16, 2026 – Main workshop program

Workshop Organizers

Mariya Zheleva, mzheleva@albany.edu, University of Albany, USA
Christopher G. DePree, cdepree@nrao.edu, NRAO, USA
Christopher R. Anderson, canderson@ntia.gov, NTIA, USA

This event is supported by NSF grant OSI-2322875.