results from the 2012 world radiocommunication conference

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S P E C T R U M P O L I C Y A N D R E G U L AT O RY I S S U E S

RESULTS FROM THE 2012 WORLD RADIOCOMMUNICATION CONFERENCE ANDREW W. CLEGG

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very three or four years, thousands of delegates, representing most nations of the world, gather to make decisions on the efficient and equitable use of the radio spectrum. The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) is held under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations. Most WRCs are held at the ITU’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, although countries occasionally offer to host the conference, as Turkey did in 2000. WRCs, and the ITU itself, are highly structured. The agenda for a WRC is established by the previous WRC, and it is not usually significantly modified after. Each conference is the culmination of a tremendous amount of discussion and technical studies that have been undertaken in the period since the previous conference. Going into each conference, the participating nations have come to tentative agreements on one or more methods to satisfy each agenda item, and the purpose of the conference is to decide on one of the options or, more likely, to come to agreements on modifications or compromises among the various options. The latest WRC was held in Geneva in January and February of this year, during an extraordinary cold snap gripping continental Europe. With very little impetus for external distractions, the conference delegates efficiently dealt with about two dozen agenda items impacting the radio spectrum, ranging from issues of global economic importance to those that were more esoteric. The duration of the meeting (four weeks) at first seems impressively lengthy, but as any delegate will tell you, it is actually quite a challenge to get most nations of the world to discuss, negotiate, and come to a formal agreement on two dozen issues in such a short amount of time. Approximately 3000 delegates attended WRC-12. Most of the delegates were members of one of the 153 national delegations that participated in the conference. Various companies and organizations with substantial interest in global spectrum issues (such as satellite operators, the amateur radio community, and the IEEE itself) were also represented, although these entities do not have a vote at the ITU. The WRC is structured such that specific items are passed from the plenary down (and back up) through a hierarchical structure of committees, working groups, and subworking groups, so that each issue can be discussed within meetings of manageable size. The opening plenary of the WRC, however, is visually impressive, as most of the 3000 delegates are gathered into a single cavernous meeting room to start the process. A continual challenge at any WRC is for one delegate, or even one delegation, to attend all meetings in which the delegate, nation, or organization has a vested interest, since all meetings except the plenary are held in parallel sessions. At WRC-12, some 750 separate meetings were held during the four-week period, including a few all-night sessions. The ultimate output of a WRC includes modifications to the ITU’s Radio Regulations, a treaty-level document that represents the agreements reached among the nations of the world on the international regulation of the radio spectrum. WRC-12 produced 356 pages of changes to global spectrum allocations that will be reflected in a 2012 edition of the Radio Regulations.

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THE ISSUES AT WRC-12 While the output of WRC-12 could (and does!) fill volumes, the following are some highlights of the issues. I’ve concentrated on the items of considerable international importance, and items with substantive outcomes that may be of interest to IEEE members.

MOBILE BROADBAND As with most recent WRCs, the agenda item of the greatest overall interest dealt with spectrum for mobile communications, such as cell phones and mobile broadband. In the parlance of the ITU, such systems are called International Mobile Telecommunications, or IMT. Two significant outcomes were achieved. First, WRC-12 approved a joint task group structure that would conduct studies on new frequency allocations for IMT services, to be adopted at the next conference in 2015 (WRC-15). Based on the economic impact of mobile broadband, and the possible corresponding loss of spectrum by other services, this issue will be a major component of work leading to WRC-15. Second, as a result of the needs of developing countries to deploy mobile broadband to compensate for a lack of wired infrastructure, WRC-12 adopted a resolution that accommodates IMT in the 694–790 MHz range in ITU Region 1 (which includes Africa, the Middle East, and Europe). This allocation, however, is not in effect until after WRC-15, and is subject to review by that conference.

PUBLIC PROTECTION AND DISASTER RELIEF (PPDR) The growing importance of wireless services during natural and man-made disasters is reflected in decisions by WRC-12 to encourage countries to consider the use of certain globally-harmonized spectrum bands for PPDR applications and to participate in technical studies of PPDR requirements leading up to WRC-15.

LEAP SECONDS A very controversial topic that has been addressed for many years without a resolution is a proposal to do away with leap seconds, which are introduced in the global time scale on an irregular basis (roughly once per year on average) to compensate for Earth’s slightly varying rotation rate. If leap seconds are dispensed with, our clocks will become noticeably out of synch with the Sun, but this will take thousands of years to have any practical impact. A small number of very vocal countries are opposed to doing away with the leap second. WRC12 approved studies in support of reaching a final resolution at WRC-15. (For those interested, the next leap second will be introduced at midnight Universal Time on June 30th, when one minute will officially contain 61 seconds.)

SPECTRUM ABOVE 275 GHZ Before WRC-12, the ITU’s table of frequency allocations ended at 275 GHz, with a footnote that calls attention to the use of certain frequency bands between 275–1,000 GHz for various scientific applications such as remote sensing and

IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2012

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S P E C T R U M P O L I C Y A N D R E G U L AT O RY I S S U E S radio astronomy. As a result of studies conducted in preparation for WRC-12, that note was extended up to 3,000 GHz, and now includes a mention that the use of this range by passive (receive-only) services does not preclude its use by active (transmitting) applications. The IEEE played a role in these studies, noting the interest in this range of frequencies for future very broadband networks and other applications.

LIGHTNING DETECTION SYSTEMS Going from one extreme of the allocation table to the other, studies leading up to WRC-12 identified the band 8.3–11.3 kHz to be the ideal range for radio-based lightning detection systems. Before WRC-12, the allocation table extended down to 9 kHz, but in response to the studies, the conference added a footnote to the table, noting the use of 8.3–11.3 kHz for lightning detection, operating as a passive system in the meteorological aids service. This provides some regulatory protections for these systems.

SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO AND COGNITIVE RADIO SYSTEMS WRC-12 took a look at modern SDR and CR systems, and decided that new regulations are not needed at this time to facilitate their operation in existing spectrum bands, except the addition of definitions of SDR and CR in the Radio Regulations.

OCEAN RADARS For many years, swept-frequency radar systems have been operating in various portions of the 3–50 MHz range, on a non-interference basis, to probe ocean currents. Operating on the principle of Bragg scattering, the radars provide important information for ocean and global climate studies, and also show promise for eventual tsunami detection and tracking applications and other safety-related uses. WRC-12 was able to come up with specific bands in which these systems can operate on an allocated basis, which affords them better regulatory protections.

tion beacons and other maritime applications to get this allocation. The amateur service also successfully achieved an agenda item for WRC-15 to investigate a potential new allocation of an unspecified amount of bandwidth in the 5250–5450 kHz band.

WHAT NEXT? Decisions made at the WRC are important, and are agreed to by participating countries by virtue of the treaty status of the Radio Regulations. In practice, however, WRC decisions must be implemented by individual countries, since the ITU has no regulatory authority over sovereign nations. This process can, and usually does, take several years. Because of the lead time required to get an issue on a WRC agenda, plus the amount of time it can take to get WRC decisions implemented on a national basis, some observers note that the ITU process is not amenable to fast implementation of innovative new uses of the radio spectrum. Given the “Moore’s Law”-like speed that new radio systems are now being developed, there are indications that the ITU process must be drastically streamlined or risk becoming irrelevant in today’s fast-moving hi-tech environment. Within its territory each country does not have to abide by the Radio Regulations, but by being a signatory they do agree that they will not cause interference to countries that are operating in accordance with the Radio Regulations. Terrestrial systems operating in frequency bands above a few hundred MHz usually have little chance of causing interference over long distances. On the other hand, satellite and aviation systems in practice usually abide by ITU regulations due to their regional or worldwide coverage. The same consideration impacts systems operating in the shortwave band and below, where global radio propagation is common.

PARTICIPATING IN THE ITU PROCESS

AMATEUR RADIO

The ITU process is contribution-driven. The work of the ITU is split among study groups and, within each study group, working parties, which are assigned responsibilities for specific agenda items for the next conference. The working parties typically meet twice per year, often in Geneva, while study groups meet typically once per year to formally approve outputs of the working parties. Many countries of the world have formal structures for creating technical and regulatory contributions to the ITU study groups and working parties. These processes are usually established and run by a country’s telecommunications regulatory authority and/or foreign affairs ministry. In the process of working on WRC agenda items, study groups of the ITU produce very useful reports and recommendations on a wide variety of spectrum-related issues, such as propagation, broadcasting, satellites, remote sensing, radio astronomy, time signals, and many other topics. Until recently, these were not freely available, but the ITU has now decided to allow free public access to all reports and recommendations. Reports are available at http://www.itu.int/pub/R-REP, and recommendations are available at http://www.itu.int/pub/R-REC. Preparations for WRC-15 have already begun, and if you have an interest in the outcome, be sure to contact your country’s relevant authority, or your participating trade association, and get involved.

The amateur radio service achieved a new secondary allocation in the range 472–479 kHz, in the medium frequency portion of the radio spectrum. The amateur community worked very hard to accommodate concerns about potential interference to naviga-

ANDREW CLEGG [SM] ([email protected]) is a spectrum manager with the U.S. National Science Foundation. He was appointed a delegate to WRC-12, where he chaired the international subworking group that established new allocations to support ocean radars.

NANO- AND PICO-SATELLITES Around the world, there is growing use of very small satellites and satellite systems for scientific, experimentation, and commercial applications. One standard for nanosatellites, called Cubesats, has been especially popular. The Cubesat standard supports satellites that are 10x10x10 cm in size, and it supports 2 or 3 such units joined together. Satellite launch providers often have small amounts of extra capacity available, and can fit one or more Cubesats in as spare cargo. The issue is that these innovative Cubesats are developed and launched on very short time scales (as short as one or two years), which does not fit into the normal regulatory framework for frequency licensing of satellites, which can take as long as nine years. Many countries have called for studies on possible ITU regulatory changes that can better support rapid approval of Cubesat-like projects, and possibly identifying the best bands for their use. WRC-12 has placed this issue on the preliminary agenda for two conferences from now (2018), and has urged studies in time for WRC-15 to look at the issue more closely.

IEEE Wireless Communications • June 2012

BIOGRAPHY

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