Copenhagen served as venue last 4-6 March for the 11th meeting of project team 42 (PT 42) of the Spectrum Engineering working group (WG SE), chaired by Stephen Bond of Ofcom.
PT 42 is the team responsible for technical issues associated to the introduction of flexible spectrum use in the bands known as Flexible Bands (862-870 MHz, 1785-1805 MHz and 57-59 GHz were the bands originally identified by the Frequency Management working group (WG FM), although the first band was excluded for not ''fitting'' the definition from Report 80 of the Electronic Communications Committee - ECC) and the Wireless Access Policy for Electronic Communication Services - WAPECS (470-862 MHz, 880-915 MHz/925-960 MHz, 1710-1785 MHz/1805-1880 MHz, 1900-1980 MHz/ 2010-2025 MHz/ 2110-2170 MHz, 2.5-2.69 GHz and 3.4-3.8 GHz).
The response to the WAPECS Mandate of the European Commission (EC) was delivered in December 2007, but was subject to CEPT public consultation until 19 February; PT SE 42 was thus available to go ahead with the Flexible Bands study. The aim of this meeting was to study the 26 responses to the public consultation and subsequent drafting of a report for the ECC. Same identified the most relevant topics and contained a summary of the responses along with the opinion of this PT.
The analysis made in the report indicated a large disparity in the submitted responses, specifically in the work conducted in the 2500-2690 MHz band (2.6 GHz). The most relevant points concern benefits in the application of ECC/DEC(05)05 (FDD (frequency division duplexing)/TDD (time division duplexing) partition in the 2.6 GHz band), the lack of interference studies (TS-TS and TS-BS) and BEM's ability to ensure the co-existence of WAPECS systems in the band.
The next meeting will be held in the second week of April, originally scheduled jointly with PT SE 24 to deal with the 862-870 MHz band. However, following analysis of the report sent to the ECC concerning the public consultation responses, it was resolved that PT SE 42 would not study this band, but rather analyse interference between terminal stations in the 2.6 GHz band and also its impact on the respective BEM (block edge mask).
