The IEEE Communications Society will sponsor a workshop on dynamic spectrum access (DSA) technology and related policy issues in Washington on 9/19/11. IEEE states:

“This workshop brings together thought leaders from the government, regulatory bodies, Department of Defense, industry, standards bodies, and academia to discuss and identify inter-disciplinary opportunities and challenges in dynamic spectrum access wireless networking. This unique workshop program contains only interactive panel sessions in order to foster collaborative discussions among the participants. Break-out sessions also provide a forum for one-to-one interaction.”

The program is now available and registration is open.

On July 27-29 NTIA will host the 12th Annual International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART) at its Boulder, CO Institute for Telecommunications Sciences. The theme this year is “Developing Forward-Thinking Rules and Processes to Fully Exploit Spectrum Resources” with a special focus on radar bands.

For the third time since his retirement from FCC, NTIA was kind enough to invite your blogger to speak at this important meeting, but due to a conflicting family event, he is unable to attend. However, in view of the importance of this issue, he volunteered to produce a written paper on the topic to help stimulate discussion. Here is a link to that paper.

The paper starts by stating the need for new spectrum to speed economic growth which is important for both our society and for national security. Spectrum allocation should not be viewed as a zero sum game, but it is critical to develop innovative sharing techniques to get the maximum use of this limited resource. Since radar systems are a large user of spectrum and are difficult to share with using conventional approaches, this is a very timely conference.

TDWR

The paper then urges FCC and NTIA to be more transparent about ongoing 5 GHz U-NII interference problems with the FAA’s TDWR weather radar. We previously mentioned the mysterious San Juan TDWR case involving interference from an AT&T-operated Motorola unit and which is puzzling based on the public record to date. NTIA has prepared a report on the San Juan case, but it mainly confirms that the DFS function in the AT&T/Motorola unit wasn’t working without explaining why. Another NTIA presentation from last year’s conference confirms that while some cases are caused by nonfunctional DFS, some have been caused by compliant DFS systems used in WISP systems, necessitating an unusual “voluntary” FCC agreement with WISPA to effectively coordinate such systems to prevent such interference. The paper urges FCC and NTIA to explain more what the root causes of these problems are so that future systems can be designed to avoid them.

The main part of the paper advocates joint design of new radar systems with communications experts in order to maximize spectrum sharing and consider financial cost sharing of features that facilitate sharing subject to the radar mission needs. Just as the stealth bomber design involved a unique team of aeronautical engineers and EEs who could trade off flying issues with radar visibility issues, joint design of radar/comm systems may well result in sharing breakthroughs. While current legislation does not allow this type of cost sharing, it is not beyond the reach of new legislation that has been discussed. The paper points out that while full duplex paired spectrum with “24/7 and 1000 ms/ 1 s” time availability has been the norm for commercial systems, the decline of voice minutes and the domination of packetized traffic means that partial time availability, synched with radar rotation, could result in productive access to radar spectrum. While nonmilitary backlobe radio have not improved in 40+ years, advances in radio astronomy antennas indicate that new designs can significantly decrease backlobe levels and facilitate sharing. Such designs are expensive, but cost sharing could address that.

if you are interested, here, again, is the link.

Tags: DFS, U-NII

Greetings from Singapore, location of IEEE DySPAN 2010 - the world’s premier cognitive radio conference.

Despite the poor economy, there are 253 attendees registered as the conference starts, including 47 from US. No one from FCC or NTIA came, although FCC alums include Bill Luther, Paul Kolodzy, Doug Sicker (the conference cochair), and myself.

During the keynote session, Dr. Geok Leng Tan, CTO of the Information Development Authority of Singapore, the local “FCC”, proudly announced a new program to encourage field testing of TV band white space devices in Singapore. This is a bold approach for a country only a few km from neighboring Malaysia.

In its announcement IDA stated

1.1 In Singapore, the spectrum of radio frequencies currently allocated for use, on a primary basis, for the provision of terrestrial broadcast services in the Very High Frequency (“VHF”), between 174 to 230 MHz, and the Ultra High Frequency (“UHF”) bands, between 494 to 790 MHz, are not all in use at any given time. The spectrum not in use for the provision of broadcast services in Singapore consists of both interleaved and contiguous spectrum blocks. The unused spectrum is known as „white spaces‟. These white spaces are situated below 1 GHz, and the propagation characteristics at these frequencies allow radio signals to travel long distances and penetrate buildings easily.

1.2 IDA welcomes the conducting of trials for white space technology in Singapore, by any interested party, to explore the various spectrum environments and regimes that white space technology could operate in. To facilitate the investigation and testing of white space devices and systems in Singapore, and to ensure continued protection of licensed services in Singapore from possible interferences that may occur during the trial period, IDA has developed a set of terms and conditions and the application procedures for interested parties who wish to conduct white space trials.