Second Meeting Of The Broadband Fixed Wireless Access Technical Group Held At Wyndham House On 24 March 2000

Barry Lewis Chairman  RA
List of all those present at Annex A

1. Mr. Lewis added documents BFWAtg(00)18 to item 1 (Matters arising), BFWAtg(00)20/21 to item 3 (CEPT SE19 Preparation) and BFWAtg(00)10r1/11r1/17/19 to item 4 (Feedback from CEPT FM34) of the agenda. The agenda was agreed.

2. The minutes of the last meeting were approved.

3. Mr. Lewis said that the action point under item 3, paragraph 4, "Completion of the review of BFWACG(00)04", was still outstanding. He would produce a paper on the impact of FS/FSS sharing in 40GHz band for the next technical group meeting. Action: Mr. Lewis

4. Under item 5, SE19(99)195 rev 4 Report and CEPT Activities, Mr Lewis had not received any comments from members on these issues and would cover under item 3 of the agenda. Mr Goodyear informed members that SE19(99)131 rev10 (Recommendation for FWA Deployment in the 26GHz Band) had now been approved in CEPT WG-SE for public consultation. The accompanying draft report had been referred back to SE19 for clarification and the public consultation had been extended until October. There was a SE19 UK briefing meeting on Monday. Mr Lewis said that the CEPT FM34 proposal for geographic band segmentation in the 28GHz band (FS/FSS) was raised at the RA Spectrum Policy Committee and endorsed.

5. Mr Lewis added that he had not received any substantive comments from members on the inter-operator co-ordination work carried out by Aegis Systems. He would like to explore the possibility of further work to examine a number of items with the backing of the BFWAtg. The report used I/N of -10dB and it was agreed that further work to examine the impact of assuming I/N = -6dB on power flux density (PFD) co-ordination distances would be useful. This could lead to a slightly higher requirement. Further agreement was reached to examine the impact of lower base station antenna downtilt figures and 3 & 6 degrees were suggested. The impact of other sector widths 30/45 degrees could also usefully be explored. Mr Lewis said that he was concerned with some aspects of the link budget calculations for the 40GHz band and the impact on assumed cell radius.

6.

III CEPT SE19 Preparation

Mr Lewis addressed the issues on the draft 26/28GHz Recommendation for FWA deployment at 26GHz and the accompanying draft report. A BFWAtg member said that he was planning to make an input (BFWGtg(00)21 "The review of SE19 recommendation for co-existence in 24-29GHz") to SE19. The opinion was expressed that the recommendation may form a template for FWA in the 28GHz band and that it might be impossible to develop a simple co-existence criteria to cover all possibilities within the bands. The report would be further considered at SE19 on 5-7 April.

It was agreed that inputs would be supplied for Monday 27 March to be presented at the SE19 UK briefing meeting.

Guard Bands for the 28GHz Band

Mr Lewis said that it was likely that there would be 3 equal sized licences in the band. A BFWAtg member said that IEEE 802.16 inputs suggest that operators can co-exist without defined guardbands by co-ordinating between themselves. He thought that regulators could set co-ordination guidelines for operators. Mr Lewis said that he favoured a similar approach since it was difficult to foresee exactly the guard band requirements and to avoid mandating the technology to be deployed (See BFWAtg(00)20). A BFWAtg member said that the minimum allocation to provide a commercially viable service needed to be addressed. Mr Lewis felt that three operators in the band was the right figure and no strong objections to not defining "hard" guardbands were made although concern was expressed that all systems should be adequately protected. A BFWAtg member commented that the guardbands for 3G were very small therefore the co-ordination was very complex. Perhaps BFWA could learn from their co-ordination process.

Mr Lewis asked if members could flag up their concerns before the next technical group meeting so that these issues could be drawn to a close. Action: Members

40GHz Draft Framework Issues – BFWAtg(00)14

Mr Lewis said that further work on this SE19 working document would take place at the next SE19 meeting. Regarding the frequency plan proposals, it was noted that the ETSI-BRAN project was proposing 1MHz slots which are considerably narrower than current proposals. SE19 has agreed that that the block assignment approach was the right way but agreement was needed on the "granularity" of the plan and the appropriate slot size. There were good ideas about guardbands and emission boundary zones in the annexes covering block edges and equipment channelisation schemes. A BFWAtg member said that systems with wide emission masks at 40GHz might not sit comfortably beside narrow band systems. He felt that there was a need for any frequency plan to achieve segmentation between systems within the band. The group needed to look closely at these issues. He would welcome members’ views on the document. Action: Members

IV Feedback from CEPT FM34 – BFWAtg(00) 10r1, 11r1, 17 &19

7. Mr Nixon gave a summary of the report (BFWAtg(00)19) of the 10^th CEPT FM34 meeting held on 16 March. He remarked that contributions to the meeting from the FSS operators re-opening discussions on capacity loss had frustrated the progress of the development of the draft new ERC Decision at 28GHz. Other contributions were concerned with estimating the guard bands (BFWAtg(00)17) required between FS and FSS bands, the EIRP density limit for the FSS earth-stations and automatic power control for the FS terminals. The FM34 Chairman considered that further work was required on the issues of the guard band and EIRP density limit and referred this to the next CEPT SE19 meeting (5-7 April) for discussion. Jim Nixon also highlighted that FS and FSS exclusive bands had been arbitrarily increased by 56 MHz by decreasing the size of the conditional bands (see BFWAtg(00)10r1). The FM34 Chairman concluded that the revised draft new ERC Decision (BFWAtg(00)11r1) would be forwarded to CEPT WG-FM for information only. The next FM34 meeting was scheduled for mid July.

V Feedback from ETSI TM4 WP2 Interim meeting – BFWAtg(00)16

8. Mr Nixon gave a summary of the report (BFWAtg(00)16) of the ETSI TM4 Interim WP2 meeting held from 28^th February to 1^st March. He highlighted the discussions on developing the block edge mask concept for the 40GHz MWS standard. The concepts were widely accepted within TM4 and had been referred to CEPT SE19 for further consideration and comment. He added that the text of the draft standard concerned with frequency plan and channel arrangements had been updated.

9. Mr Nixon also remarked that considerable progress had been made on developing the 26-29 GHz multi-carrier TDMA standard. The rapporteur for the standard expected the draft standard to be available at the next full TM4 plenary meeting (19^th – 23^rd June) for the two step approval process.

10. A BFWAtg member said that there was some discussion on TM4 Work Item 04069 - co-existence between point to point and point to multipoint in the band which also needed to be addressed within the this forum. Mr Lewis agreed to make draft available to the group. A BFWAtg member said that he would be producing further proposals to TM4 and hoped that others members of the group would do the same. He would like to complete this work at the next TM4 plenary. He added that the draft specification on the 40GHz antenna work would be discussed at a TM4 WP4 Interim Meeting in the following week. Action: Mr Lewis (Circulate draft TM4 WI 04069)

11. The revised Issues List was reviewed.

VII Any Other Business

12. Mr Lewis pointed out that there were a number of draft ETSI and CEPT documents that were not in the public domain and therefore could not be made generally available through the Agency Website. Chairmen of the appropriate groups were being approached to see whether access to BFWAtg members through a password protected area would allay concerns. Members agreed that if acceptable this seemed a reasonable approach. Action: Mr Lewis

XI Date of Next Meeting.

The next meeting will be held on 27 April at 10.30am at Wyndham House.

RA2/BFWA
25 April, 2000

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Annex A

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