FCC Wireless Chief Says Receiver Standards a Thorny Issue

The FCC remains concerned about receiver standards, Wireless Bureau Chief Donald Stockdale said at the virtual European Spectrum Management Conference Wednesday. Stockdale suggested the FCC do more to address the issue. Speakers on a second panel said Europe may not follow the U.S. in allocating the entire 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use, which the FCC did in April (see 2004230059).

Receiver standards have long been raised at the FCC, including a lengthy exam by its Technological Advisory Council, which led to a 2014 report. The FCC launched an inquiry into the need for receiver standards in 2003, a recommendation of its Spectrum Policy Task Force. The regulator ended the inquiry four years later (see 0705040148). Historically, the commission has focused on preventing interference by regulating power levels and emissions from transmitters.

“One of the weaknesses in the market today” is that “regulators generally do not regulate receivers,” Stockdale said. “I’m not saying they should. But there are also not really the incentives in place for equipment manufacturers to install the filters … to filter out, for example, out-of-band transmissions.” As spectrum is used more intensively, “one of the things we should be thinking about” is how to persuade manufacturers to build better receivers, he said.

“The demand for wireless data, and therefore for spectrum, continues to grow exponentially while the supply of spectrum is fixed,” Stockdale said. Technological changes, including the move from analog to digital and allowing the use of high-band spectrum, “have helped to a considerable extent” but aren’t enough, he said. Other technologies like improved compression are also important, Stockdale said.

The FCC reacted by adopting flexible licensing rules “so that licensees can seamlessly adopt new technologies as they are introduced and that’s made more efficient use of the spectrum,” Stockdale said. The agency held overlay auctions, moving other licensees from a band to other spectrum and starting to use incentive auctions, he said. The regulator is also putting more emphasis on sharing, he said. “Recently … technology has opened up new opportunities for dynamic sharing,” Stockdale said, citing the citizens broadband radio service band rules.

There are 25,000 base stations deployed in the CBRS band, with hundreds more coming online each week, said Jennifer McCarthy, Federated Wireless vice president-legal advocacy. It’s “very exciting to see all of this deployment, particularly in this difficult time with COVID-19,” she said: “It just shows the pent-up demand for mid-band spectrum.” A “wide variety of companies” are lining up to participate in the priority access license auction, she said.

It’s difficult to predict what will come as a result of 5G, said Gosta Lemne, Ericsson director-business development. “Once you have a fully secure connection with very low latency, there’s a lot of stuff you can do,” he said. “We didn’t imagine fully the smartphone, either, when we launched 3G” 20 years ago, he said.

5G will require predictable allocations of spectrum, Lemne said: With “industries or hospitals or harbors, we’re talking about decades of planning.” 5G will also mean changes in network traffic patterns, he said. The more remote an area, “the higher the need for the ability to run things remotely,” he said. Lemne said regulators need to make sure unlicensed spectrum is used efficiently. Some devices are 30 years old, he said: Someone “will turn on a walkie-talkie and block an entire band. … Knowing where your unlicensed stuff is and being able to control it is an asset.”

Chris Woolford, director-international spectrum policy at the U.K.’s Ofcom, said the regulator is considering allocating just the lower 500 MHz of the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use. There's also broad interest in that part of the band in the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, he said. “Those discussions are still ongoing.” The broader European discussion is on protecting fixed links more broadly and safe train technology in a few counties, he said: “There are different views on how those fixed links need to be protected.”

Carriers will require licensed use of some of the 6 GHz band to meet the needs for mid-band spectrum for 5G, said Reza Karimi, Huawei Technologies director-corporate strategy. The upper part of the band “is a good match for 5G,” he said. “It provides a good balance between coverage and capacity.”