Search for Spectrum Could Imperil Military Radars, Naval Research Lab Official Warns

"It seems to me that this is a contest between the commercial benefits of wireless expansion and the need for national defense and public safety radar,” Mokole said. “The political pressure to find 500 MHz for mobile broadband can have a lasting and perhaps life threatening effect.” Military systems have already suffered as spectrum has been rededicated to commercial use, he said. Mokole cited the FCC auction of the 3650-3700 MHz band, which was to be used by the Navy’s Air Traffic Control/Air Marshalling Radar. “That loss of 50 MHz has severely limited the performance of the radar and its replacement [spectrum] still has not been determined,” he said.

Sharing military radar systems won’t be easy, especially for older systems, Mokole said. “Reducing interference to acceptable levels in environments that are densely populated by telecommunications devices is very challenging,” Mokole said. “It is no simple matter to change hardware and introduce new wave forms into these legacy systems. With newer systems, there’s a lot greater chance of that happening."

Mokole also said he would like to see better cooperation between NTIA and the FCC and that more money needs to be dedicated to spectrum research and development. Military planning offices, like the one funding the Navy’s huge, expensive radar system, need to be part of the discussions, he said. “They should be involved because that’s where the money is,” he said. “Guess what? If we're going to have a collaboration and interaction they have to be heavily involved."

NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia said radar frequencies are key to the administration’s 500 MHz plan. “Over 55 percent of the spectrum that was identified during NTIA’s 10 year plan and timetable was, in fact, radar spectrum,” Nebbia said. “If we're going to solve our problem of identifying 500 MHz, a significant part of it is going to have to deal with radar spectrum in one way or another.” For example, in the 1300-1350 MHz band, under examination for broadband, NTIA has to address some 330 frequency assignments that support civilian air travel or military radars. The 2700-2900 band supports air-traffic control and weather radar systems, with almost 900 radar assignments.

Spectrum sharing will have to be part of any move to find 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband, former White House official Phillip Weiser said Thursday in a keynote. Spectrum sharing is a key part of the current administration’s focus, said Weiser, now dean of the University of Colorado Law School. Weiser’s remarks came a day after the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee took up discussion of a policy paper on spectrum sharing (CD July 28 p4).

Spectrum sharing “is still taking root, it is still developing around legal and technical insights, it is basically in a somewhat formative state,” Weiser said. “What gets lost many times” about the administration’s 500 MHz goal “is that goal includes spectrum that is shared among different users. There is a lot of different sharing that’s going on today. There is going to be a lot more. As a precious resource … this is a very sound approach because if you dedicate spectrum solely to one use and preclude sharing you are using it inefficiently."

Weiser said NTIA is already considering sharing of the 3650 MHz band, used by the Navy, which will likely be proposed for sharing in non-coastal areas. “We need to look more aggressively at sharing and ways in which it can happen,” he said. Weiser said the broader implications of the FCC’s proposed sharing of the TV white spaces for unlicensed use for “super-Wi-Fi” are often missed. “It’s not merely about giving people a service … it’s also about testing out a technology that if scales for cooperative use is going to have broad applicability,” he said. “That is an exciting opportunity that we need to be watching."

For sharing to work, licensees have to trust that enforcement mechanisms will be effective, Weiser said. “In many cases we have a hazard that is lurking,” he said. “People say, ‘I may be willing to enter into some cooperative arrangements … if I knew we had a dispute mechanism that could put a halt to otherwise interfering uses.’ But if people don’t believe those institutional mechanisms will operate that act is a huge chill on efficient use of this resource.” Indications are that at this point FCC enforcement mechanisms aren’t set up to provide licensees with the level of assurance they need, he said. “The collateral consequences of a lack of trust in that enforcement is fairly significant,” he said. “This can be true on the federal side too. If federal users want to share with non-federal users they need to know … there will be a mechanism to address bad behavior.”

Science and technical considerations in the end will triumph over rhetoric in spectrum debates, Weiser said. “There is often a premium in Washington on rhetoric, but ultimately rhetoric gets cut through, not quite as easily as a knife through butter, but it will happen,” he said. “At that point the underlying technical merits will matter."

No Incentives to Share Spectrum

Dale Hatfield, former chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology and acting NTIA administrator, said offering the right incentives will be critical to sharing. “I don’t see us making very much progress in this entire area unless we get the incentives right,” he said. “It’s like renting my house,” he said. “If you're sort of going to force me to rent my house I get very concerned about do I really want to do this. Can I evict the person after they rent my house?”

One of the real disincentives is the scarcity of highly-trained technical people be able to solve problems when they occur, he said. “These problems are really hard,” he said. “You kind of like in your career to work on problems that you have some hope will be solvable problems.” Federal agency decision makers have to ask, what happens if they agree to share spectrum and something goes really wrong, he said. “I end up in front of Congress in a hearing that can be really, really ugly. … It’s not exactly a strong motivation.” Agencies also have little to gain from sharing their spectrum, Hatfield said. “Generally, there’s no payoff,” he said. “If you find a way to share spectrum and so forth, your budget isn’t necessarily increased.”

Richard Reaser, head of the Spectrum and E3 Department at Raytheon, said contractors have little to gain by creating efficient radar systems or coming up with ideas for spectrum sharing. “There’s absolutely no incentive for contractors to do this,” he said. “There’s no commercial market.” More dynamic use of spectrum is a recurring subject of conferences and papers, but there’s “not a whole lot going on out there in the real world.” Much discussion in spectrum circles has centered on the NTIA’s spectrum testbed, but Raytheon isn’t participating, Reaser said. “We had to put our own money forth … and there’s no contract out there that we're going to bid on that actually incentivizes our ability to share or to do the kinds of things that are being done in the testbed so that we can get a future contract,” he said. “If that incentive is not there you're just got to see a lot of people in the testbed who are major competitors.”

Getting the right incentives for sharing is critical, conceded Mary Brown, director of technology and spectrum policy at Cisco. “It is a real issue,” Brown said. “As I look out at the spectrum landscape … the demand for wireless data is absolutely exploding. The high-power mobile guys need a lot more spectrum if they're going to keep up with the consumer demand. Unlicensed uses like Wi-Fi need more spectrum as well."

Meanwhile, CTIA and its carrier members sent a letter to President Barack Obama Thursday asking for his leadership in directing the NTIA to clear “unused and underutilized government spectrum bands” below 3 GHz. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile officials signed the letter. “The U.S. wireless industry wants to remain the envy of the world by continuing to offer our customers the best and most innovative products and services,” the letter said. “In order to meet current and projected demands for wireless technology, we must get more spectrum. By allowing our members to purchase the spectrum at auction, the U.S. Treasury will generate billions of dollars of revenue and in turn, we will continue to invest in America and Americans.”