Satellite Interests Pushing Earth Station Siting Ideas

Earth station applicants should specify a requested antenna pointing range and show operations won't increase population coverage and so won't affect local upper microwave flexible use service licensees or impede future earth station applicants, SES, O3b, Inmarsat and Telesat said in comments posted Tuesday in FCC docket 17-172. Friday was the deadline for comments on implementing earth station siting methodologies in the 28 GHz and 37/39 GHz bands (see 1707240050). The satellite operators said applicants should be required to overlay the antenna contour with terrain data, such as from the U.S. Geological Survey. And they said the FCC should encourage earth station collocation by not factoring in the population covered by a new 28 GHz earth station when its interference zone falls within that of a grandfathered earth station. Boeing said power flux density contour and protection zone calculations should use existing propagation models from the ITU and 3rd Generation Partnership Project and be based on proposed earth station antenna models or data. The company said those contour and protection zone calculations should account for shielding or terrain features as part of the estimated interference levels. OneWeb said the FCC should let fixed satellite service earth station applicants use either the time-invariant gain or time-variant gain methods for assessing gain toward the horizon to allow non-geostationary orbit satellite constellations enough flexibility. The company said the agency shouldn't prescribe a single means of determining population percentages but allow earth station applicants to use any verified data source and accepted calculation method. ViaSat said the 0.1 percent population coverage limit should reflect antenna pointing only at the satellite points of communication in the earth station application, not all possible antenna pointing scenarios. It said applicants shouldn't be allowed to use worst-case modeling.