The 71st meeting of the Short Range Devices/Maintenance Group (SRD/MG)1 working group was held on 6-8 September 2017 in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, chaired by Thomas Weber and attended by 48 participants from various administrations and bodies, including the European Commission, the European Communications Office (ECO) and industry.
The meeting served to debate comments received in the scope of the public consultation which ran until 15 August 2017, on the proposals to modify annexes 1, 2, 3, 5, 9 and 12 of Recommendation 70-03. The comments received were all resolved and will be considered at the 89th WG FM meeting for approval and publication.
The main aim of the proposed revision of Decision ECC (15)05, under public consultation until 15 August 2017, was to review the definitions of antenna and mode of operation for PMR446 equipment. The comments received were all resolved and will be considered at the 89th WG FM meeting for approval and publication; it must be emphasised that the proposed changes to the definition of integrated antenna were not accepted.
Issues such as ultra wide band (UWB), machine-to-machine/internet of things (M2M/IoT), urban rail systems in intelligent transport system (ITS) bands in 5.9 GHz that may imply revision of Decision ECC (08)01 and WiGig applications for the 60 GHz (57-66 GHz) band were also discussed.
Discussions also began on how to regulate wireless power transfer (WPT) technology.
1 SRD/MG deals with matters associated to short range devices and among other issues is responsible for updating Recommendation ERC/REC 70-03, for responding to the permanent European Commission mandate on short range devices with a view to updating the Commission Decision on SRD (Decision 2006/771/EC of 9 November 2006, modified by Decisions 2008/432/EC of 23 May 2008, 2009/381/EC of 3 May 2009, 2010/368/EU of 30 June 2010, 2011/829/EU of 8 December 2011 and 2013/752/EU of 11 December 2013), for issues concerning ultra wide band technology and for identifying new spectrum opportunities for SRD introduction. Note that in March 2017 a permanent European Commission mandate on UWB technology was approved.
