Broadcom Has Concerns about LTE-Unlicensed Test Plan
Broadcom has concerns about the Wi-Fi Alliance’s LTE-unlicensed/Wi-Fi test plan (see 1609210069) but is willing to compromise to get a plan in place, representatives of the company told the FCC, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-105 on meetings…
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with aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai. “Broadcom is concerned about several of the compromises that were made by the Wi-Fi Alliance in order to complete the test plan on time (e.g., removal of instances where the LTE-U interference signal will be stronger than the desired Wi-Fi signal, removal of instances involving signals below -82 dBm),” the filing said. “A variety of scenarios important to consumers will no longer be covered by the test plan.” Broadcom said the plan is “a reasonable outcome for the multi-stakeholder process as long as it applies to all non-standard unlicensed LTE … and all aspects of the test plan are properly executed by Wi-Fi Alliance validated labs to ensure the results actually reflect channel access fairness.” The “listen before talk” (LBT) protocol for license assisted access and Wi-Fi’s Alliance’s coexistence test plan for LTE-unlicensed don’t eliminate all threats to Wi-Fi, said Joey Padden, who has worked as a CableLabs analyst, in a Friday blog post. “At least two big problems remain,” Padden wrote. “LBT addresses channel access, but it does not fully address channel occupancy issues. Second, the coexistence test plan will be of little value without a baseline data set documenting the performance of modern Wi-Fi in the wild prior to any LTE-U or LAA deployment.” Wi-Fi has become far too important not to take the issue seriously, he said. “It's not good enough to throw up our public policy hands, let new uses disrupt Wi-Fi and just chant ‘permission-less innovation’ while the Wi-Fi frog is slowly boiling in the background.”