OSTP Reports on Spectrum Management Highlight Sharing
The Trump administration released two reports Thursday on the future of spectrum and 5G. By the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, they are part of the administration’s broader pursuit of a national spectrum strategy, as directed by President Donald Trump last year (see 1810250058). Among the recommendations are receiver standards and more sophisticated sharing.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
“The effort to invest in R&D recognizes that the future of public and private-sector spectrum use must be flexible, focus on better awareness of spectrum use and spectrum congestion, and spectrum decision-making must be autonomous,” said a report on research needs. It advised pursuit of “spectrum flexibility and agility to use multiple bands and new waveforms,” improvement of “near real-time spectrum awareness” and increased “spectrum efficiency and effectiveness through secure autonomous spectrum decision making.”
For now, OSTP sought focus on advanced antenna arrays and algorithms, including MIMO, beam forming and steering. It recommended new standards for receivers to “incorporate new technologies that support new waveforms and multiple bands and reduce susceptibility to out-of-band emissions.” It wants improvements to dynamic spectrum access for sharing “a larger class of wireless systems and frequencies.”
The report recommended identification of new bands for sharing. “Properly evaluate and protect radio frequency emissions and interference to Federal assets in order to increase the interference tolerance and flexible spectrum access of space-based systems, where feasible.”
A second report looks at enabling technologies core network function processing, backhaul and fronthaul networks and radio access networks.” That report said 5G offers big advantages over earlier generations of wireless. “Arguably, the properties that most distinguish 5G from its predecessors are its flexibility and adaptability, which are required to meet the needs of the diverse applications that 5G is intended to support,” that report said. “Core network technologies that support these properties include software defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), network slicing, multi-access edge computing (MEC), and cloud radio access networks (C-RAN)."
Industry observers were reviewing the papers. One likely concern is the documents put much emphasis on sharing. “Sharing is necessary,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. “In many bands, I’d prefer to see less emphasis on sharing and more on repurposing.”
“Spectrum policy is one of those areas too wonky to get the attention it deserves, so any report to come out of the White House on spectrum is ... welcome,” said Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Broadband and Spectrum Policy Director Doug Brake. “The use case and demand report is a very thorough compilation of information that will prove quite useful in grounding discussions of spectrum demand going forward. The research agenda report hits on a lot of promising opportunities, but is quite broad and general.” Brake said both reports are “unfortunately light on how we can transition federal spectrum to more productive use, other than to nod to existing NTIA efforts.”