Compliance recordkeeping is how spectrum and ground station operations prove they are doing what their licenses, coordination agreements, and internal policies require. It turns daily activity—frequency use, power levels, maintenance, incidents, and access—into evidence that can stand up to customer reviews, regulator inquiries, and formal audits. Strong recordkeeping also improves operations: it shortens troubleshooting, reduces repeat mistakes, and makes change control safer.
Table of contents
- What Compliance Recordkeeping Means
- What Auditors and Regulators Usually Look For
- The Core Records You Should Maintain
- Operational Logs: Frequency, Power, and Configuration
- Spectrum Monitoring and Interference Evidence
- Change Control and Approvals
- Maintenance, Calibration, and Test Records
- Security, Access, and System Integrity Logs
- Incident Management: Root Cause and Corrective Actions
- Retention, Organization, and Chain of Custody
- Audit Readiness Checklist
- Compliance Recordkeeping FAQ
- Glossary
What Compliance Recordkeeping Means
Compliance recordkeeping is the set of logs, documents, and controls that demonstrate your station operated within authorized limits and followed required procedures. It includes what you transmitted, when you transmitted it, who approved it, how you monitored it, and what you did when something went wrong.
The goal is not paperwork for its own sake. The goal is traceability: an auditor should be able to pick a date and a service and reconstruct what happened from the records—without relying on personal memory or informal chat threads.
What Auditors and Regulators Usually Look For
Most audits focus on the same fundamentals:
Authorization: proof you were licensed/authorized to transmit where and how you did.
Controls: evidence that changes were approved and access was managed.
Operations within limits: records showing frequency, bandwidth, power, emissions, and location constraints were met.
Monitoring and response: how you detect interference or anomalies and how you respond.
Retention: confirmation that records exist for the required period and are protected from tampering.
Customer audits often add service-level questions: uptime, incident history, maintenance discipline, and security practices, especially if the station supports sensitive missions or TT&C.
The Core Records You Should Maintain
A practical recordkeeping program usually includes:
Licenses and coordination artifacts: licenses, filings, coordination letters, and any special conditions or operating constraints.
Station configuration baseline: equipment inventory, RF chain diagrams, software versions, and approved operating parameters.
Operational transmission logs: who transmitted, what frequencies/bandwidths, power levels, polarization, and time windows.
Spectrum monitoring records: spectrum captures, alarms, and analysis during anomalies.
Change control records: approvals, implementation notes, and rollback plans.
Maintenance and calibration logs: scheduled work, repairs, calibration certificates, and test results.
Security logs: access, authentication events, privilege changes, and physical access records.
Incident reports: timeline, impact, root cause, corrective actions, and verification of fixes.
Operational Logs: Frequency, Power, and Configuration
Operational logs should make it easy to answer: “What was on the air?” at any point in time. At minimum, capture:
Date/time (UTC) and duration: start/stop timestamps aligned to a consistent clock source.
Service and mission context: satellite, customer, pass/contact ID, link purpose (TT&C, payload, gateway).
RF parameters: center frequency, bandwidth/symbol rate, modulation/coding profile, polarization.
Transmit power: configured power, measured power, EIRP calculation inputs if required.
Configuration state: modem profile ID, upconverter/downconverter settings, filter path, HPA/SSPA mode, antenna ID.
Where possible, prefer automatic logging from control systems and baseband equipment, backed by time-synced measurements. Manual logs are valuable but easier to miss during busy operations.
Spectrum Monitoring and Interference Evidence
Spectrum monitoring records provide independent proof of on-air behavior and are often the most persuasive audit artifacts. Useful evidence includes:
Spectrum snapshots or waterfalls: before/during/after an event, showing carrier placement and out-of-band emissions behavior.
Alarm logs: unexpected carrier detection, power threshold breaches, or frequency drift alerts.
Interference tickets: time-correlated captures, suspected source notes, and resolution steps.
When interference disputes occur, time-synchronized evidence and clear chain-of-custody practices can be the difference between a quick resolution and a long escalation.
Change Control and Approvals
Audits often fail on “small” uncontrolled changes: a frequency tweak, a power adjustment, a firmware upgrade, or a filter path change that was never recorded. Strong change control answers:
Who approved it? role-based approvals and sign-offs.
What changed? config diffs, new parameter values, impacted services.
When did it change? implementation window and exact timestamps.
How was it validated? post-change test results and monitoring notes.
How do we roll back? a defined rollback plan for risky changes.
Even lightweight change control—done consistently—dramatically improves audit readiness.
Maintenance, Calibration, and Test Records
Maintenance evidence shows the station is operated safely and predictably. Maintain records for:
Preventive maintenance: inspections, cleaning, lubrication, connector checks, grounding checks, radome checks, de-icing systems (if applicable).
Corrective maintenance: repairs, part replacements, failure analysis, and retest results.
Calibration: calibration certificates for spectrum analyzers, power meters, timing references, and other measurement equipment.
Acceptance tests: commissioning reports and periodic validation (EIRP verification, antenna patterns if required, modem BER tests).
Calibration and test records are especially important when you must demonstrate compliance with emission limits or power constraints.
Security, Access, and System Integrity Logs
A station that can command satellites or handle sensitive payload data needs security evidence. Typical logs include:
User access logs: authentication events, failed logins, MFA status, privilege changes, account provisioning/deprovisioning.
System logs: admin actions, configuration changes, software deployments, and integrity alerts.
Network logs: firewall changes, segmentation controls, remote access sessions, and VPN activity.
Physical access logs: site entry logs, camera retention policy, visitor records, and escort rules.
Even if licensing does not mandate specific security logs, customers and partners often do—especially for TT&C or government-adjacent operations.
Incident Management: Root Cause and Corrective Actions
Auditors look for evidence that problems are handled systematically. A strong incident record includes:
Timeline: detection, triage, mitigation, restoration, and follow-up milestones.
Impact: affected links, duration, data loss risk, customer impact, compliance exposure.
Root cause: hardware, software, human process, or external interference source.
Corrective actions: what changed, who approved it, and how you verified it worked.
Lessons learned: updates to procedures, monitoring thresholds, training, or spares strategy.
The key is closing the loop: proving that corrective actions were implemented and validated—not just suggested.
Retention, Organization, and Chain of Custody
Recordkeeping fails when records exist but cannot be found, trusted, or interpreted. Practical safeguards include:
Retention policy: define how long each record type is kept and align it with regulatory/customer requirements.
Consistent naming: a predictable naming scheme (date, station, satellite, pass ID, channel ID).
Time synchronization: keep systems on a consistent time source and store timestamps in UTC.
Access controls: restrict who can edit records; keep write-once or append-only logs where possible.
Chain of custody: preserve original spectrum captures and logs, record who exported them and when.
If you ever need to defend your operations, “tamper-evident” practices matter as much as the content itself.
Audit Readiness Checklist
Use this checklist to quickly assess readiness:
Licensing: current license/authorization documents are accessible, with conditions clearly summarized.
Baseline: station configuration baseline exists and matches deployed equipment/software.
Logging: transmission logs are time-synced, searchable, and include frequency/bandwidth/power/config state.
Monitoring: spectrum monitoring data is retained and tied to incidents and change windows.
Change control: changes are tracked with approvals, validation evidence, and rollback notes.
Maintenance: preventive maintenance is scheduled and recorded; calibrations are current.
Security: access logs and privilege changes are reviewable; physical access records are maintained.
Incidents: incidents have timelines, root cause, and verified corrective actions.
Compliance Recordkeeping FAQ
What’s the single most important record for spectrum compliance?
A time-synchronized transmission log that can prove what frequencies, bandwidths, and power levels were used—plus supporting evidence from spectrum monitoring when issues arise.
Do I need manual operator logs if systems already log automatically?
Automated logs are ideal, but manual logs can still add context (why a change was made, what the operator observed). The best approach is automated logs as the system of record, with operator notes as supporting context.
How do I make spectrum captures “audit-safe”?
Store originals, keep timestamps in UTC, document who exported them, and control write access. If possible, use append-only storage or integrity checks so you can show the evidence wasn’t altered after the fact.
How long should we retain compliance records?
Retention depends on regulatory requirements, license conditions, and customer contracts. Define a policy by record type and ensure you can consistently meet it, including for high-volume data like spectrum waterfalls.
Glossary
Compliance evidence: Records that demonstrate operations met regulatory, licensing, and contractual requirements.
System of record: The authoritative source for operational truth (e.g., automated logs from control systems).
Chain of custody: Documentation showing how evidence was created, handled, and preserved.
Emission mask: Limits on out-of-band emissions required by regulators or coordination agreements.
EIRP: Effective Isotropic Radiated Power—apparent transmit power in the direction of maximum antenna gain.
Change control: A controlled process for approving, implementing, and documenting operational changes.
Spectrum monitoring: Measuring and recording RF activity to detect interference, drift, or noncompliant emissions.
Corrective action: A change made to prevent recurrence of an incident or noncompliance.
Audit readiness: The ability to produce complete, trustworthy records quickly when requested.
More
