WCA Notebook...

of FCC’s Office of Engineering & Technology, said that during UWB rulemaking, “virtually nobody was worried about GPR except for the FAA… GPRs have been around forever and haven’t caused problems to anybody forever.” Marcus said many GPR devices had GPS systems mounted on same box but hadn’t caused reported interference to GPS operations. “I'm not convinced FAA has done the technical analysis correctly,” he said. Johnson said: “We've been in business for 32 years and the FCC has never recorded a single incident of GPR interfering with another receiver. Our equipment is operated at virtually every airport in the country and on most military bases.” GPR manufacturers and service providers filed petitions at FCC recently seeking reconsideration of portions of UWB rules they contended were too restrictive to allow their systems to continue operating for most applications. Ground Penetrating Radar Industry Coalition (GPRIC) filed petition for limited stay of enforcement of UWB rules, contending that changes were adopted in contravention of Administrative Procedure Act. Earlier this week, U.S. GPS Industry Council filed opposition to petition at FCC, saying stay request should be rejected even if Commission was procedurally obligated to issue further notice before adopting some provisions of final rules. “Because no FCC rules authorizing ground penetrating radars are currently in effect, a stay in the effectiveness of the new rules about which GPRIC complains would have the consequence of removing any basis for lawful operation of GPRs, leaving GPRIC’s members in a worse position than they would have be with the new rules in effect,” opposition filing said. Marcus also countered some descriptions of UWB as potential last-mile, broadband solution and technology for similar longer range advanced wireless services. Because FCC order earlier this year on UWB used very conservative power limits, “ultra- wideband isn’t going to be used for any of these things,” he said. Manufacturers instead are talking about short-range transmission ranges of 10 m and initial data ranges of 100 Mbps, he said. Marcus also addressed concerns raised by some licensees that FCC had no right to authorize technologies such as UWB in bands for which they have paid at auction. “People who have that point of view might want to read” Part 15 rule that Commission issued in 1989, he said. “Up until that point, every class of unlicensed device had very specific bands in which they were allowed to operate,” Marcus said. Decision in 1989 said that besides those rules, “in most parts of the spectrum but not all,” unlicensed devices would have freedom to operate as they wished as long as they met certain power and interference requirements, he said. Officials of UWB developers XtremeSpectrum and Time Domain said first commercial markets for that technology would involve high bandwidth, personal area networks. Those operations will connect consumer electronic devices in the home and office “at very high data rates,” said Jeff Ross, vp-corporate development & strategy for Time Domain. He and Veronica Haggart of XtremeSpectrum emphasized that UWB was likely to complement rather than compete with Bluetooth and 802.11 systems. “We believe that ultra-wideband fills in the gaps,” Ross said. Bluetooth offers low data rates at ranges of 10 m and 802.11 offers higher data rates. “What’s unserved today is the market for multimedia,” he said. At very low power levels, UWB will offer 100 Mbps at 10 m with ability to scale up to 400 Mbps, he said.