Spectrum Sharing Could Take Different Forms, NTIA Says
NTIA acknowledged that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work for sharing federal spectrum with commercial users, in a document released this week responding to recommendations by a Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee working group. The NTIA response is slated for discussion at the CSMAC meeting Thursday, the group’s last of the year. In May, NTIA instructed the CSMAC to refocus on sharing between commercial and federal users in the 1695-1710 MHz and 1755-1850 MHz bands (CD May 31 p1).
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Much administration focus has been on dynamic sharing of federal spectrum, as embraced by the FCC for the TV white spaces, which relies on sensing, the use of a database, or a combination of approaches to determine whether spectrum at a particular location is being used or is available for sharing.
More use of dynamic spectrum sharing was a key recommendation of the controversial July report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (CD July 23 p1). Carriers, led by CTIA, question whether dynamic sharing technologies are ready for prime time, though they see temporal and geographic sharing as more viable given the state of current technology (CD June 25 p1).
Before the entire CSMAC was reconfigured into five new working groups, all focused on aspects of sharing, CSMAC had a Spectrum Sharing Subcommittee. The NTIA document responds to preliminary recommendations by the subcommittee (http://xrl.us/bnsbvw), which were discussed at length at CSMAC’s March 1 meeting.
"There are many potential spectrum sharing approaches that are capable of meeting the spectrum sharing requirements,” NTIA said, digesting the recommendations (http://xrl.us/bnsbxf). “The different approaches have their own costs, advantages and disadvantages that depend on the entrant and incumbent system details. ... When analyzing alternate approaches, both the entrant and incumbent factors need to be considered in selecting the spectrum sharing approaches. It is likely that multiple spectrum sharing approaches will be used in a band to most economically accommodate the incumbent and entrant requirements. Selecting a spectrum sharing approach now is likely to result in a costly or an ineffective approach that will not ultimately be successful."
NTIA then offers a brief response. “NTIA agrees with the recommendation,” it said. “NTIA believes that no specific approach applies to all situations. For example, database approaches may not work well in bands with highly mobile incumbents."
NTIA also acknowledged in response to the subcommittee that “reaching agreement on the analytical engineering analysis tools and procedures to be used in sharing studies” will be “difficult.”
"The incumbent spectrum users want protection and typically employ conservative analysis approaches possibly placing unnecessary restrictions on the new entrant,” NTIA said. “On the other hand, the new entrants to the spectrum desire the greatest flexibility possible when implementing an emerging technology or service which typically means using a less conservative analysis approach. To offer the greatest access by both the incumbent and the new entrant, analysis must use exact and real-life operational characteristics of both systems.”