WifiForward fired back after the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials asked the FCC to reserve the 5.9 GHz band for public safety use. A connected vehicle environment “holds the potential to support a fundamental advancement in ensuring the safety of our nation’s surface transportation system,” AASHTO said Monday in docket 13-49: “For this promising future to become a reality, the 5.9 GHz spectrum must be preserved for transportation safety purposes.” WifiForward later responded in a statement: “The FCC can achieve a win-win solution for auto safety and broadband by taking a fresh look at the rules for the 5.9 GHz band. Dedicating spectrum to specific transportation applications would merely perpetuate the waste of this extremely valuable resource at a time when we need it more than ever.”
The Ultra Wideband Alliance supported a June filing by engineering company Robert Bosch, which said the FCC should launch an "early” and ”comprehensive” review of Part 15, Subpart F regulations on ultra-wideband devices and systems (see 1907190010). When the commission issued the order establishing the UWB rules in 2002, it “characterized the limits and restrictions of Subpart F as ‘ultra-conservative’ and stated that the Commission intended to reconsider many of the restrictions and conditions at a later date based upon industry experience,” the alliance said in comments that were due Saturday in docket RM-11844: “There is now extensive industry experience which confirms this characterization by the Commission. UWB has been widely used and proven to cause no harmful interference to other radio services. As noted in the petition, the FCC has acknowledged the extremely low risk of harmful interference by issuing multiple waivers to reduce some of the Subpart F restrictions.” Novelda, which makes radar semiconductor devices and modules operating under the UWB rules, agreed the rules should get a fresh look. “Our products are used in a wide variety of applications,” Novelda commented: “Many of these applications will benefit from a review of the UWB rules as proposed by Robert Bosch. … A more globally harmonised set of rules will promote UWB technology worldwide and help Novelda and its customers to bring the benefits of our technology to many more consumers.” Vayyar, which develops and supplies 3D imaging sensors, also supported the petition. “In sensors the transmitter and the receiver are in most cases collocated in the device and whenever the device transmits, it configures the receiver to await the reflected signals, the provisions of 15.519(a)(1) do not make sense in this context, and we believe that part 15.519(a)(1) should be cancelled,” Vayyar said. “ZIGPOS would like to underline the importance for such a review, revision and enhancement of the so far still very conservative UWB rules in the U.S. in order to allow for further growth and increased competitiveness of automated production systems and advanced manufacturing sites,” that company said.
The FDA offered the FCC advice on medical and other devices that operate on frequencies not covered by FCC rules, in an April letter, posted by the FCC Monday. “We agree that with the increase in technology that uses frequencies below 300 kHz and even below 100 kHz, setting human exposure limits below 300 kHz and 100 kHz would better ensure the protection of the general public,” said the letter posted in docket 13-84. The biological response to frequencies below 300 kHz is “complex,” the letter said: “At the lower end of this range, electrostimulation (nerve stimulation) and induced currents predominate; at the upper end, heating is the predominant effect.” Current guidelines by IEEE and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection don’t have identical specifications, the agency said. Both are “adequate to protect the general public in this frequency range,” FDA said: “Either of these would be an adequate model for the FCC to adopt for their rules below 300 kHz.” Chairman Ajit Pai recently circulated an item that keeps current limits in place, while making a few changes to update the rules (see 1908080061).
EU studies demonstrate “Wi-Fi can share the 6 GHz band without causing harmful interference to fixed and satellite operations,” said Broadcom and Qualcomm representatives in a meeting with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff. European regulators have started to draft “harmonized regulations that will enable” unlicensed use of the 5925-6425 MHz band, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 17-183. “Europe’s experience and the conservative assumptions that they used should give U.S. regulators confidence in opening the 6 GHz band to indoor low power unlicensed operations." Tech players see the band, under examination at the FCC, as critical to Wi-Fi's future (see 1906260055).
Current RF limits for devices licensed by the FCC are safe and don’t need to be strengthened, the agency announced Thursday after years of study and in consultation with public health experts in the federal government. In March 2013, the FCC released a Further NPRM asking about the commission’s RF exposure limits and policies. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is circulating for a vote a resolution of the inquiry from 2013, an order addressing the 2013 FNPRM, an NPRM seeking comment on how to determine compliance with the RF standard for high-frequency devices, and an order dealing with a few issues on which parties sought reconsideration, a senior official said. The Pai proposal would “establish a uniform set of guidelines for ensuring compliance with the limits regardless of the service or technology, replacing the Commission’s current inconsistent patchwork of service-specific rules,” said a news release. The FCC sets RF levels in consultation with the FDA and other agencies, said Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology. “After a thorough review of the record and consultation with these agencies, we find it appropriate to maintain the existing radiofrequency limits, which are among the most stringent in the world for cell phones,” Knapp said. “We are pleased that the FCC continues to follow the guidance of expert scientific organizations and health agencies such as the FDA when it comes to RF and health,” a CTIA spokesperson said: “The scientific consensus is that there are no known health risks from all forms of RF energy at the low levels approved for every day consumer use.” The FCC needs to “bring those proceedings to a close,” emailed Joe Van Eaton, municipal lawyer at Best Best. His clients "have been asking the commission to do so for some time. We’ll wait and see whether the commission’s decision does that, and whether it is justified or not, and whether it is based on the latest data.” The issues go beyond exposure limits, he said: “We know that the small cells being placed in rights of way and on rooftops do have emissions that exceed the FCC limits within a certain distance of the antenna.”
AT&T Services filed at the FCC a recent study by the Electronic Communications Committee of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations that it said has implications for the 6 GHz band. The report “examines the co-existence of RLAN [radio local access network] systems with, among other things, Fixed Service microwave point-to-point links operating in the precise band where RLAN operations have been proposed in this docket,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295. AT&T said the report “includes a Minimum Coupling Loss 3 analysis that is far more comprehensive and rigorous than RKF Report submitted in this docket previously, finds that significant separation distances are required for RLANs, regardless of the morphology of the analyzed area and under varying indoor/outdoor and power conditions.” The report “underscores the need to adopt automated frequency coordination (AFC) system requirements for all devices -- if any -- introduced into any portion of the 6 GHz band,” the filing said. Major tech players argued part of the band can safely support unlicensed operations without the need for AFC (see 1906260055).
A group of tech company executives met with aides to all the FCC commissioners on the 6 GHz band, urging the agency to authorize use of the band indoors without automated frequency control (AFC). The issue figured large when the FCC took comment earlier this year (see 1903180047). “We expressed support for the NPRM’s framework, its recognition of the need for additional unlicensed frequencies, and the importance of FCC rules implementing a framework that would support intensive use of the band,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 17-183. “We explained that authorization of low-power, indoor-only devices throughout the band is critical to this goal as AFC control may be incompatible with a number of important use cases and device price points.” The companies also said the FCC should allow very-low-power devices “at power levels 160 times lower than today’s Wi-Fi -- to enable important short-range, portable applications.” Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft and Qualcomm had representatives at the meetings.
Updated rules for fixed TV white spaces devices, approved by commissioners 5-0 in March (see 1903200059), take effect Aug. 19, says a notice for Friday's Federal Register. The revised rule “requires all fixed white space devices to incorporate a geo-location capability such as GPS and eliminates the option that permitted the geographic coordinates of a fixed device to be determined by a professional installer,” the FCC says: “The Commission also will allow the use of external geo-location sources by a fixed white space device when the device is used at a location where its internal geo-location capability does not function, such as deep inside a building.”
Microsoft and Verizon received FCC experimental licenses to do tests in the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band. Microsoft plans tests at its campus in Redmond, Washington. Verizon said it plans “a series of field tests” using BDRS devices at different locations. “Field tests will be conducted in a production network, in a highly controlled field environment, in order to assist in the development of commercial products,” the carrier said: “The testing will benefit the public interest by enabling the pre-commercial testing of new products outside of a lab environment but in a controlled and managed manner.”
The 5G Automotive Association said it filed two reports at the FCC, arguing for a waiver allowing the deployment of cellular vehicle-to-everything technology (C-V2X) in the upper 20 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band (see 1902270041). The first report, “V2X Functional and Performance Test Report; Test Procedures and Results” is an amended version of the initial report attached to the 5GAA waiver petition, the group said Tuesday: “As previously referenced in the record, 5GAA discovered in February of this year a discrepancy in the configuration of [dedicated short range communications] devices used in this initial testing. 5GAA thus expanded its testing to collect updated C-V2X and DSRC data while using a corrected configuration for the DSRC devices.” A second report is an addendum to the initial report, containing test results demonstrating that “C-V2X messages transmitted over a 20 MHz channel are delivered with the same reliability as those sent over a 10 MHz channel,” 5GAA said. The filing was posted in docket 13-49. Wi-Fi advocates see the band as offering critical mid-band spectrum for unlicensed use.