Will “secondary access” to aeronautical spectrum be feasible?

Secondary spectrum access has become a buzz word in mobile commuications community. In spite of extensive research in this field, only few attention has been paid to assessing the real life value of the secondary access. On top of that, most of the practical assessment effort has been given to TV white spaces in 470-790 MHz. One can have a look at QUASAR website for more information: www.quasarspectrum.eu

When we have a look at the spectrum allocation table, it is easy to find that big chunks of interesting spectrum are allocated primarily to aeronautical usage. An example is 960-1215 MHz band which is mainly used by aeronautical distance measuring equipment (DME). As an activity of QUASAR project, I am going to investigate the feasibility of mobile broadband service in this frequency band. Since this spectrum is related to the “safety-of-life” operation, a conservative protection criteria is required in the investigation. A femto-cell type indoor service is considered to be the secondary access system because (a) it gives more flexibility of deployment and (b) it provides easier protection than outdoor systems do.
Follow-up articles will be posted later along with the publication of the results.
This entry was posted in Spectrum. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Will “secondary access” to aeronautical spectrum be feasible?

  1. Jens Zander says:

    An interesting question is if the airline industry will allow this. There are lot’s of “cheap shots” available, i.e. politically correct, but not very easily quantifiable arguments – like “we cannot allow any interference that can jeopardize human lives”. Look how long it took to allow WLAN:s on-board aircraft. Not until the industry realized that they themselves can monetize wireless technology things started to move.

    • Ki Won Sung says:

      That’s true. The major barrier of this scenario will be the inter-industry agreement. From the research perspective, it is important to give a correct figure of the feasibility so that the industries can have a basis of their decision.

Leave a Reply to Jens Zander Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *