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International Civil Aviation Organization
REPORT / Report
30 April 2010

AERONAUTICAL COMMUNICATIONS PANEL (ACP)

TWENTY SECOND MEETING OF WORKING GROUP F

Mexico City, Mexico 26 – 30 April 2010

REPORT

1. Introduction

1.1 The meeting was preceded by a Regional Preparatory Group (RPG) meeting for ITU WRC-12 (21-22 April 2010) and a warm welcome was personally made to the participants of WG-F by Loretta Martin, ICAO Regional Director, Mexico City. Mr. Steve Mitchell, the Rapporteur of Working Group F officially opened the meeting and expressed the gratitude of the group to the ICAO regional office for arranging the meeting facilities and for being given the chance to hold WG-F once again in Mexico City. Mr Alessandro Capretti from the ICAO Secretariat, Montreal acted as the Secretary of the meeting.

1.2 After the opening of the meeting the agenda was approved by the group. The agenda is contained in Appendix A

1.3 The list of working papers submitted for consideration by Working Group F is contained in Appendix B. The list of participants is in Appendix C.

2. Agenda Item 2 – Review, update and development of the ICAO Frequency

Spectrum Handbook

2.1 WP9 presented a proposal for some initial text to be included in development of Volume 2 of the ICAO Frequency Spectrum Handbook. The proposal covered VHF communications planning criteria with an aim to provide general planning guidance that could be used on a global level. During the presentation of the working paper there was a request that WG-F participants check the detail of the separation table in particular and feedback any comments back to the documents author. Additionally, during the presentation it was stated that there may be a need to consider revision and the necessity to some parts of Annex 10 and in particular Volume V Attachment A. The working paper was very much appreciated by the meeting who felt that this was a very good start in the process of developing of Volume 2 of the ICAO Frequency Spectrum Handbook.


3. Agenda item 3 – Development of material for ITU-R meetings

WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.3

3.1 At WG-F/21 the meeting produced a temporary document (Attachment G to WG-F /21 meeting report) for further work and consideration at this meeting of WG-F. WP5 presented details of proposed modification of this document which was intended to form part of a proposed ICAO contribution to the next meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5B. During the ensuing discussion a number of issues were raised and in particular those related to the status of the links that were needed. In further development of the document the meeting produced Appendix D which the meeting recommended to the ICAO Secretariat should form the basis of any input into ITU-R Working Part 5B. One participant of the meeting did not agree with the full contents of the document produced.

3.2 WP11 presented details on a proposed UK paper that was intended as an input into the next meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5B. The paper was concentrating on the type of services that the various UAS links needed to operate under now that a decision on the amount of spectrum required had been reached and was fully in line with the ICAO Position for WRC-12. The author of the paper requested that any feedback on the proposed UK input be made available during the meeting.

3.3 Although already partially addressed in ICAO, WP12 presented details of the review undertaken with the ICAO NSP Spectrum Subgroup (SSG) on the proposed sharing between MLS and AMS(R)S. A number of changes were proposed by the NSP to the ITU-R document 5B/417 Annex 18 and in addition raised two questions. These questions were adequately addressed during the WG-F meeting (TMP3) and it was therefore recommended to the ICAO Secretariat that the proposed changes contained in Appendix E of this meeting report be sent to ITU-R Working Party 5B.

WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.4

5GHz wireless LAN

3.4 WP4 presented a limited study on the potential use of an airport surfaced based aeronautical 5GHz wireless LAN currently under development within the aeronautical community. The paper highlighted the work currently ongoing within RTCA, EUROCAE and ICAO and also that current evaluation of the system by radio regulatory administrations seemed to be considering old data based on pre WRC-07 data. During its introduction it was stated that a realistic model as possible had been used in trying to determine the spectrum requirements for such a system and that the conclusion was that the current AM(R)S allocation of 59 MHz is unlikely to meet the AM(R)S requirements for the proposed system. In the resulting discussion as to whether ICAO should make a contribution to the ITU-R on this issue a number of participants felt that some of the applications identified were not part of the AM(R)S and also that some double system accounting may be taking place with other aeronautical developments. Equally, given the way that the wireless LAN system is developing there were views expressed that ICAO should make a contribution to the next meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5B to highlight this problem.

3.5 WP7 provided further background material on the work to date on developing the 5GHz aeronautical wireless LAN and also included proposals for the preliminary draft new ITU-R Report titled “Spectrum requirements for surface applications at airports in the 5 GHz range”. In the presentation of this paper it was made clear that since the previous ITU-R Report M.2120 was completed, a number of new AM(R)S applications had become known and these were part of the current spectrum requirements contained in the preliminary draft report. It was also stated that that the most efficient methods of delivering the data throughput had been used but still the spectrum requirements exceeded the 59 MHz currently allocated. A number of participants that while a spectrum demand in excess of 59 MHz was being identified they were not convinced that they were all AM(R)S requirements. Equally, a number of other participants believed that this was important information and representative examples of applications were needed to be considered by administrations in order to avoid a future WRC agenda item being generated since this particular item had been considered at both WRC-07 and WRC-12.

3.6 The meeting agreed to attempt to draft a possible paper that the ICAO Secretariat to consider presenting at the next meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5B. After consideration of an initial draft the differences expressed in the meeting made it difficult to find a unified approach and therefore it was left with the ICAO Secretariat to decide whether an ICAO contribution should be presented at the ITU-R. For information the initial draft generated in the meeting can be found as Appendix F to this report.

NOTE: After further consideration and discussion outside of the meeting, the ICAO Secretariat felt that an ICAO contribution on this issue, and based upon WP4 and WP7, to the ITU-R was necessary. The ICAO Secretariat subsequently generated a contribution which was presented at the ITU-R Working Party 5B meeting held in May 2010.

1 GHz AM(R)S

3.7 WP8 addressed a liaison statement that has been sent from the March 2010 meeting of ITU-R Working Party 4C to ITU-R Working Party 5B. The paper addresses compatibility between AM(R)S operated in the frequency band 960 – 1164 MHz and RNSS operating in the frequency band 1164 – 1215 MHz. It was stated in the paper that in the liaison statement the element of AM(R)S out of band (OOB) emissions had not been taken into account and the paper contained details of a proposal going into ITU-R Working Party 5B from an administration that is aimed at rectifying this. During the discussion a question was raised as to why the % used for the OOB emissions was different to that used for other interfering sources. It was explained that this % was fairly standard for OOB emissions due to the other in-band interference sources that need to be taken into account in the apportionment of interference. The meeting were requested to take the information into consideration when addressing the issue within the ITU-R.

WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.7

3.8 WP10 presented information on the discussions that had taken place at the March 2010 meeting of ITU-R Working Party 4C, areas for further consideration and proposals for changes to the CPM text. During its introduction it was stated that within the ITU-R discussions there was still a disagreement between different administrations on whether there is really a problem to be solved and therefore on what method to agree to. In the ensuing discussion there remained a majority view that the ORM process still needed to be more transparent and that ICAO could still have a role to play in any co-ordination process. One participant disagreed with these views stating that the ORM had not been fully understood and that in the past legitimate requests for AMS(R)S spectrum had been met and are likely to be met in the future.

3.9 The presentation in WP13 provided a view from a global MSS/AMS(R)S satellite operators perspective on how the co-ordination process had satisfied AMS(R)S spectrum requirements to date and were expected to in the future, why the existing provisions of the of the Radio Regulations were adequate and hence why there was no need to make any changes to these provisions. During the presentation it was stated that the ORM was a technical based efficient process for frequency co-ordination and that any new forum may unnecessarily complicate the process. It was further stated that that there may be a valuable roll for ICAO to play in the co-ordination process without creating another forum. The discussions that took place following the presentation were very similar to those that took place for WP10.

3.10 IP17 provided a presentation relating to the whole subject of WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.7 and Resolution 222. The presentation had previously been made at the regional spectrum seminar that had immediately preceded this meeting of WG-F and was felt to be useful background material for the WG-F discussions. In addition for background material IP17, IP18 and IP20, which were documents from the March 2010 of ITU-R Working Party 4C, were given a brief introduction.

3.11 The meeting agreed that ICAO should make further contributions to the ITU-R particularly relating to a proposed co-ordination process and the CPM text for WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.7. Copies of the material developed during the meeting can be found as Appendix G and Appendix H of this meeting report. It was also recommended that this material be further refined through correspondence outside the meeting which the ICAO Secretariat agreed to facilitate.

NOTE: In order to obtain a response from a large an audience as possible, a wide ACP invite was sent to offer anybody with any comments to make an opportunity to provide them via correspondence. The correspondence session started immediately after the meeting with a completion date of 31 May 2010.

ITU-R Working Party 4C

MLS/RNSS compatibility

3.12 IP19 provided details of an ongoing ITU-R Working Party 4C sharing study between MLS and RNSS at 5 GHz. One of the issues highlighted during the introduction of this paper was the inability of RNSS to tolerate the emissions received from MLS operating near to the adjacent band edge of 5030 MHz. It was further stated that this may mean that MLS could not operate on all its available channels and in particular those at the lower edge of its range. Conversely, anther view stated was that this meant that RNSS might not be able to operate at airports where a MLS was in use. The ICAO Secretariat explained that the ICAO NSO SSG had already part reviewed this document with regards to the characteristics of the MLS as requested by the ITU-R but the consequences had not been considered. The Secretariat also stated that given short timescales it was unlikely that ICAO could make a contribution on this issue to ITU-R Working Party 5B. It was recommended by the meeting therefore that the ICAO NSP SSG review the document in more detail with an aim to provide an ICAO contribution to the next meeting of ITU-R Working Party 4C.

ITU-R Working Party 5B

Liaison statements

3.13 At the last meeting of WG-F (December 2009) the meeting considered a liaison statement from ITU-R Working Party 5B regarding Man Overboard (MOB) devices. At that time the meeting agreed that the liaison statement needed be considered by the Search and Rescue experts within ICAO. WP2 contained the results of these considerations within ICAO along with useful background material. During the presentation of WP2 it was suggested that any ICAO response to the ITU-R should specifically address the questions raised in the liaison statement. The meeting agreed with this approach and a copy of the proposed contribution to ITU-R Working Party 5B can be found as Appendix I to this report. IP16 which was related to this issue was already contained in WP2 and was therefore not considered separately in this meeting.

PLT

3.14 IP15 contained details of a proposed State input into ITU-R Working Party 5B relating to the protection of aeronautical systems from Power Line Technology (PLT). It was stated during its presentation that the approach being proposed was similar to that introduced into the UWB discussions and that the author was seeking comments. In the ensuing discussion only two comments were received but were of a similar nature i.e. that using intra system protection criteria for non aeronautical systems was not necessarily the best approach for protecting aeronautical systems.