First LightSquared/GPS Working Group Meeting Held
March 8, 2011The first meeting of the Working Group (WG), cooperatively conducted by LightSquared and the U.S. GPS Industry Council (USGIC) to study the GPS overload/desensitization issue, took place on March 3 in Washington, D.C., attended by roughly 40 people, many by phone link from offices around the Unites States and Canada, and from Europe where several key industry participants were attending the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit conference.
The meeting lasted slightly more than five hours. LightSquared presented its planned system, with charts showing emission levels, and the approach that the company recommends for testing. The company asked what level of degradation to GPS from LightSquared emissions would be acceptable. No agreement was reached on this issue, nor was a firm agreement concluded on how testing is to be done. Tests have yet to get fully underway.
LightSquared suggested that both lab and field testing be conducted, the latter at base stations that the company will set up on towers that it has leased. LightSquared is not yet permitted to turn on its transmitters. At the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration, whose users may be affected, LightSquared must obtain an experimental license from the FCC in order for testing to begin.
As outlined in the Working Plan (see attached PDF of complete plan), the WG is co-chaired by Charles R. Trimble, chairman of the USGIC, and Jeffrey Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president of regulatory affairs and public policy. The co-chairs are responsible for preparing the monthly status reports to the FCC, on the 15th of each month until June 15, when the final report is due.
A Technical Working Group (TWG) is comprised of GPS industry experts to provide guidance and recommendations for the WG on critical elements of the interference study. The TWG is made up of 14 to 20 individuals representing a diversity of receiver categories and installed user groups.
There are two facilitators from each organization. At the March 3 meeting, executive VP of ecosystem development and satellite business Martin Harriman and senior VP, satellite engineering and operations Jeff Snyder, represented LightSquared. The company’s principal speaker was Santanu Dutta, senior VP, radio access technologies and chief engineer.
LightSquared claims to have developed a filter “to cure all woes,” a very sharp filter to cut the company’s emissions above 1559 MHz, the lower limit of one of the key radionavigation bands. But such a filter has, reportedly, not yet been produced for the GPS community to use in testing. The concern is that transmissions of more than 1,000 watts below 1559 MHz will intrude into areas where GPS receivers are still vulnerable.
Corrections to earlier LightSquared Aired in Bavaria story:
Mobile services data traffic has increased by a factor of 50 (not by five, as was erroneously reported previously) over the last five years, and is projected to increase another 50-fold (again, far greater than the fivefold figure cited earlier) in the next five years.
Also, in March of 2010, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that called for 500 MHz of spectrum to be found and made newly available, as part of the National Broadband Plan.
In June 2010, the President Obama further directed all executive branches of government to do just that: find it! This directive included the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation, which might otherwise have resisted attempts to enter what they consider their spectrum territory; they were firmly told to assist. In February 2011 — after the FCC granted the conditional waiver to LightSquared for ancillary terrestrial transmitters — the President reiterated this commitment.
As this recent history was reviewed for the audience at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit, some attendees felt a distinct chill as the political muscle behind this move swam more clearly into focus.
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