The Italian town of Montegrotto hosted last 11-12 March the 12th meeting of project team 42 (PT 42) of the Spectrum Engineering working group (WG SE), chaired by OFCOM's Stephen Bond.
PT 42 is the team responsible for technical issues related to the introduction of flexible spectrum use in the bands known as Flexible Bands (862-870 MHz, 1785-1805 MHz and 57-59 GHz were the bands originally determined by the Frequency Management working group (WG FM) and the Wireless Access Policy for Electronic Communications Services (WAPECS), 470-862 MHz, 880-915 MHz/925-960 MHz, 1710-1785 MHz/1805-1880 MHz, 1900-1980 MHz/ 2010-2025 MHz/ 2110-2170 MHz, 2.5-2.69 GHz and 3.4-3.8 GHz). The response to the WAPECS Mandate from the European Commission (EC) was delivered in December 2007 (CEPT Report 19) and later submitted to public consultation as per CEPT procedures.
At the previous PT 42 meeting (4-6 March 2008) the group examined the 26 responses received and produced a report for the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC), with the EC the final destination. The document identified the most relevant topics from the public consultation and presented a summary of the responses with the group's respective opinion.
At the last ECC meeting (10-14 March 2008) it was concluded that PT 42 should complete the studies in the scope of WAPECS, specifically:
- Study interference between terminals in the 2500-2690 band (2.6 GHz) and respective impact on the BEM (block edge mask) for terminals;
- Justify the maximum value for in-band power imposed in the BEM for base stations in the same band.
As for the 862-870 MHz band, the ECC resolved that same should remain outside the scope of PT 42, with PT 24 (SRD/MG) to have sole responsibility for the studies.
As per the ECC mandate, PT 42 began to produce a document on interference between terminal stations in the adjacent TDD/FDD (time division duplexing/frequency division duplexing) channel for the 2.6 GHz band, which discusses the parameters and values to use in the studies. Regarding justification of the maximum in-band power value, due to the lack of contributions a decision was made to send a response to the ECC indicating that the chosen value was a compromise between reasonable network coverage and a low probability of blocking neighbouring networks.
Due to the urgency indicated by the ECC regarding the aforementioned interference studies, an extraordinary meeting has been scheduled for next 21-23 May in the offices of the European Radiocommunication Office (ERO) in Copenhagen.
