The Irish city of Cork hosted last 15-19 September the 68th meeting of the ECC Spectrum Engineering working group (WG SE), attended by about 51 participants, including the observer from the European Communications Office (ECO) as well as representatives from industry and operators (ASECAP, APWPT, Car2Car Communication Consortium, DECT Forum, FBConsulting Sarl, Digital Europe, Inmarsat Ventures Limited, OnAir, Robert Bosh GmbH, Telenor and Wi-Fi Aliance).
The following documents were approved, after the consultation phase:
- Draft ECC Report 220 “Compatibility and sharing studies of DA2GC, PMSE video links, SRD and DECT in the 2 GHz unpaired bands”;
- Draft ECC Report 221 “Adjacent band compatibility between MFCN and PMSE audio applications in the 700 MHz frequency band”;
- Draft ECC Report 222 “The impact of Surveillance Radar equipment operating in the 76 to 79 GHz range for helicopter application on radio systems”;
- Revision of Recommendation T/R 14-01 “Radio-frequency channel arrangements for high capacity analogue and digital radio-relay systems operating in the band 5925 6425 MHz”;
- Revision of Recommendation T/R 14-02 “Radio-frequency channel arrangements for high, medium and low capacity digital fixed service systems operating in the band 6425 7125 MHz”;
- New Recommendation ECC/REC(14)06, “Implementation of Fixed Service Point-to-Point narrow channels (3.5 MHz, 1.75 MHz, 0.5 MHz, 0.25 MHz, 0.025 MHz) in the guard bands and centre gaps of the lower 6 GHz (5925-6425 MHz) and upper 6 GHz (6425-7125 MHz) bands”.
The following documents were preliminarily adopted and forwarded for public consultation:
- Draft ECC Report 227 on “Compatibility Studies for Mobile/Fixed Communication Networks (MFCN) Supplemental Downlink (SDL) operating in the 1452-1492 MHz band”;
- Revision of ERC/REC 12-11 on “Radio frequency channel arrangements for fixed service systems operating in the bands 48.5 50.2 GHz and 50.9 52.6 GHz”;
- Revision of ERC/REC 12-12 on “Radio frequency channel arrangement for fixed service systems operating in the band 55.78 57.0 GHz”;
- Draft ECC Report 228 on “Compatibility studies between Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in the band 5855-5925 MHz and other systems in adjacent bands”;
- Draft ECC Report 226 on “Unwanted emissions of IRIDIUM satellites in the band 1610.6 1613.8 MHz, monitoring campaign 2013”.
Spectrum Engineering project team 7 (PT SE7), responsible for mobile systems except international mobile telecommunications (IMT), was mandated to analyse compatibility between public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) systems and programme making and special events (PMSE) equipment operating in 698 703 MHz/753-758 MHz and 733-736 MHz/788-791MHz, and mobile/fixed communications networks/supplemental downlink (MFCN/SDL) as well as DTD operating below 694 MHz. Regarding studies to introduce long term evolution (LTE400) PPDR in the 410-430 MHz and 450-470 MHz bands, work has basically progressed in the latter band, with some PPDR (LTE400) impact studies already carried out for digital technology mobile private radio (TETRA) systems, TETRAPOL and code division multiple access/public access mobile radio (CDMA/PAMR) operating in the 450-470 MHz band, as well as with digital terrestrial TV (DTT) in channel 21.
As for the fixed service work of Spectrum Engineering project team 19 (PT SE19), beyond revision of the aforementioned recommendations, PT SE19 has been asked to draw up guidelines for planning fixed service links that use multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) to increase capacity.
Regarding work by Spectrum Engineering project team 24 (PT SE24) in the scope of low power short range devices (SRDs), the effort per the European Commission (EC) mandate to introduce radio local area network (RLAN) in all 5 GHz bands is notably not yet finalised owing to a lack of contributions from the RLAN community. Actually, some studies are complete, thought the respective mitigation techniques must still be drawn up. However, the backers of that RLAN equipment (from the United States of America) have not shown readiness to address compatibility problems found in Europe, rather concentrating on their domestic problems. Regarding preparatory work for the upcoming 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15), the results are not encouraging, given that it is hard to make RLAN compatible with earth exploration satellite services (EESS) and radio location-finding service.
The next meeting of the Spectrum Engineering group will be held on 26-30 January 2015 in Austria.
