The 65th meeting of the working group on Short Range Devices/Maintenance Group (SRD/MG) took place last 2-4 September, chaired by Thomas Weber and attended by 41 participants from various administrations and bodies (including the European Commission (EC) and the European Communications Office) as well as industry.
SRD/MG covers issues associated to short range devices and among other duties is responsible for updating Recommendation ERC/REC 70-03 and replying to the permanent EC mandate on short range devices with a view to updating the EC decision on low power short range devices (SRD), and also matters concerning ultra wide band (UWB) technology and the identification of new spectrum opportunities for SRD introduction.
At the 83rd meeting of the Frequency Management working group (WG FM) in May 2015 several documents proposed by SRD/MG were approved for public consultation; the comments they received were dealt with at this meeting, specifically:
- proposal to revise Decision ECC/DEC/(09)01 on harmonised use of the 63-64 GHz frequency band for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS);
- proposal to revise annex 10 of Recommendation 70-03, with a new entry for use of the 173.965-216 MHz band by assistive listening devices (ALD).
Mandated by WG FM, SRD/MG endorsed and approved for publication the proposed revision of annex 10 of Recommendation 70-03. The proposal to revise Decision ECC/DEC/(09)01 will be forwarded to the 84th WG FM meeting in February 2016 for approval and publication.
WG FM agreed with the ECO’s proposal for Recommendation 70-03 to be directly managed from the ECO Frequency Information System (EFIS) portal; the respective application is expected to be finalised and implemented before the end of this year. In that regard, SRD/MG reviewed the current structure of Recommendation 70-03, identifying mistakes, correcting them and proposing improvements, among them the creation of a new appendix with the duty-cycle (DC) categories and respective definition.
It was also noted that in annexes 10 and 13 of Recommendation 70-03 some frequency bands are repeated and with the same spectrum usage conditions (e.g. 863-865 MHz and 1795-1800 MHz). Given that annex 10 (radio microphones and assistive listening devices) and annex 13 (wireless audio applications) cover the same issues, it was proposed that the possibility of joining annexes 10 and 13 in one single annex should be discussed.
Regarding the EC’s permanent mandate on SRD, the group continued to work with a view to the sixth update of the EC Decision on SRD; a CEPT report is being produced in response to the mandate.
Some frequency bands/applications are being examined for the possibility of eventual inclusion in the EC Decision on SRD, to wit: medical body area network systems (MBANS) in the 2483.5-2500 MHz band; narrowband/broadband radio frequency identification (RFID) devices in the 13.56 MHz band; bands below 9kHz; bands in 870-876/915-921 MHz; helicopter applications in the 76-77 GHz band; wireless industrial applications (WIA); ALD in the 173.965-216 MHz band; and updated SRD parameters in the 122-123 GHz band in accordance with the latest studies conducted by CEPT (in principle the new limits will not create problems because the equipment is not yet on the market).
Also noteworthy is that the analysis of the questionnaire on cognitive techniques for SRD, which researched the extent of use or expected use of cognitive techniques by short range devices and respective requisites, has been inserted in the CEPT report. However, plans call for only initial results of the research to be presented, without proposing any kind of regulatory solution during this phase.
One of the sections stressed in the proposed CEPT report concerns verification of how far it is possible to remove current limits on the use of SRD devices already authorised by the Commission Decision on SRD; it continues to be developed by the group.
Another highlight under development in the proposed CEPT report is the inclusion of the Commission Decisions on RFID (2006/804/EC) and UWB (2007/131/EC) in the EC Decision on SRD.
At this meeting the group basically focused on the following matters: distribution of tasks to continue developing the proposed CEPT report, with several web-meetings scheduled for that purpose; reduction of section 5.4 of the proposed CEPT report; consideration of a proposal for the 57-66 GHz band (already authorised in some CEPT countries, among them Portugal, though excluding fixed installations in outdoor spaces) to include scenarios with usage in outdoor spaces, proposing new studies to see whether it is possible to authorise installations in outdoor spaces and to authorise higher power capacities.
SRD/MG finished the drawing up and revision of radio interface specifications (RIS) models for professional mobile radio (PMR) 446 in the 446.0-446.2 MHz band (concerning the new Decision ECC/DEC/(15)05), intelligent transport systems (ITS) in the 5875-5925 MHz band (concerning revision of Decision ECC/DEC/(08)01), ITS non-safety in the 5855-5875 MHz band (concerning revision of Recommendation ECC/DEC/(08)01) and UWB LT2 in the 3.1-4.8 GHz band (concerning revision of Recommendation ECC/DEC/(11)09.
