(Boulder, CO) – Lawrence Strickling, head of NTIA and the Assistant Secretary of Commerce, opened the 2015 International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART Conference) in Boulder, Colorado last week by taking stock in the industry’s progress since President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) first “concluded that the traditional approach of clearing spectrum used by government agencies and then auctioning it off for exclusive private sector use was becoming too costly, too time-consuming and too disruptive to be sustainable.”
In response, a lively discussion ensued Tuesday and Wednesday which included panel discussions on “New Radio Technologies,” Test and Measurement” and “Regulatory Processes.” Google’s Preston Marshall, principal wireless architect for Google Access encouraged a collaborative approach to hasten realization of shared spectrum deployment.
Rich Lee, CEO of Denver-based iPosi, posed the question to the “Test and Measurement” panel, just after Qualcomm’s presentation showing improved co-existence with LTE-U that even improves legacy WiFi throughput using the 802.11 asynchronous protocol, “Isn’t the quantum improvement (summarized in Qualcomm’s presentation and analysis) of data throughput and lower interference attributable mostly to synchronization which is available in LTE but not WiFi?” Lee added, “In higher density radio operations, organizing and orchestrating the local channel requires use of distributed time synchronization.” Frank Sanders of ITS/NTIA, Prof. Jeff Reed of Virginia Tech, and Yongin Wei of Qualcomm agreed as did others on the panel that synchronization offers substantial, and perhaps profound value toward improved shared spectrum across all bands.
Although CTIA President Meredith Atwell Baker declared that, “Sharing has its place, but sharing simply can’t be the default answer….” Julius Knapp, Chief, FCC Office of Engineering & Technology commented on the substantial collaborative progress made to date implying there is more to come for federal and commercial shared spectrum. For more information go to iposi.com or email info@iposi.com.