Athens hosted last 14-16 September the 39th meeting of project team 44 (PT44) on satellite communications of the Frequency Management working group (WG FM), with France presiding. It was attended by 27 participants encompassing a total of 12 administrations, as well as representatives from industry, specifically AB5 Consulting, DJCSL (both representing OneWeb), Eutelsat, Inmarsat, SES and ViaSat, Inc, and from radio-astronomy and the European Communications Office (ECO).
Various issues were considered, of which the following stand out:
- review of ECC decisions;
- revision of ECC Report 66 on aircraft protection from satellite terminal emissions;
- fixed and moving Earth stations operating in the Ku band with non-geostationary satellite systems.
Three revision proposals were drawn up for ECC Decisions ECC (ECC/DEC/(05)09, ECC/DEC/(06)10 and ECC/DEC/(11)01), as well as a new ECC Decision meant to eliminate Decision ECTRA/DEC/(97)02.
Regarding the revision of ECC Report 66, work began on producing a contribution to be submitted to WG FM and later forwarded to the Spectrum Engineering working group (WG SE), based on the response to the assistance request from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which should be included in the webmeeting to be held on 6 October.
Also standing out is the start of work on a draft ECC decision on harmonised use and individual licence exemption of fixed Earth stations operating in the Ku band with non-geostationary satellite systems, and a new draft ECC report on use of Earth stations in motion (ESIM) operating in the Ku band with non-geostationary satellite systems.
In this regard, a contribution was also produced for the project team on Spectrum Engineering (SE40) so that fixed Earth stations’ minimum distances from airport boundaries could be calculated in order to protect aircraft, based on methodology of the current ECC Report 66.
Finally, the French administration notably put forward a feasibility study for machine-to-machine (M2M) operations via satellite systems operating below 1 GHz, which will be presented by the WG FM chair at the next meeting so that the best course of action can be decided.
The 40th meeting of WG FM PT44 will be held this coming 28-30 November in Mainz, Germany.
