Antennas, 5G Getting Attention as TAC Launches Work on Busy Agenda
The FCC’s Technological Advisory Council is zeroing in on antenna issues this year with a new working group chaired by Marty Cooper of Dyna, a cellphone pioneer. One likely recommendation will address the aesthetics of antennas, Cooper said. TAC is also digging into the spectrum needs of drones. A third working group will look at 5G and how and why it's poised to take off. The meeting was TAC’s first of 2018 and officials reported the working groups are just starting work on their assignments from the FCC.
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The antenna committee will likely recommend that municipalities make light poles available for antennas but also find that carriers should have an obligation to make them either invisible or attractive, Cooper said. “It's a very serious issue and it has been troubling me for 30 years,” he said. The group will spend a lot of time on array antennas -- multiple connected antennas that work together and are more spectrally efficient -- Cooper said. The group will also look at metamaterial antennas and antennas used with high-frequency spectrum for 5G, he said.
Thinking on antennas has to change, said TAC Chairman Dennis Roberson, consultant and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. “Antennas were always these nice pieces of metal that were half or a quarter wavelength,” he said. “A lot of the regulations were written with that in mind. That’s your grandfather’s antenna. That’s not the current antennas at all.” Antennas today “defy characterization,” he said. Roberson urged the committee to look at how FCC regulations may need to change. He said he long hoped TAC would “dig into” the issue.
Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, also encouraged the committee to look at how antennas are regulated and whether there are rules that could get in the way of technology. “A lot our rules are based on the old technology,” he said. “They assumed antennas were radiating in a single direction and they stayed still.”
The working group on spectrum for drones is looking at the broad needs, not just those for command and control of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), said John Chapin of Roberson & Associates, who's chairing the group. “This is also the payload communications for the things that people are trying to use the UAS for,” he said. A key question is which UAS activities can rely on existing communications services like 4G LTE, he said. “I anticipate a fairly significant emphasis on that particular question,” he said. “This is a very complex, rapidly evolving space,” Chapin said. There has been a lot of focus by the Federal Aviation Administration and industry, he said: “The FCC is hoping that this effort by the TAC can help make some sense of this very broad and diverse space.”
TAC members said since drones are still new, they’re a good area for a focus on spectral efficiency. “I get a little nervous about this notion of efficiency,” countered Dale Hatfield, former OET chief, now at Silicon Flatirons. “You can be very efficient at doing the wrong thing. … I think we need to be a little bit careful about how one might define efficiency when there are other considerations as well.”
“I was astonished by how many different kinds of drones or UASs there are” and the group needs to be careful not to lump them together, Knapp said. The group also has to decide which pieces it wants to tackle and coordinate closely with the FAA and other agencies, he said.
A third working group is looking at the IoT in the 5G era. The group will look at the effect of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure applications to 5G growth, said Russ Gyurek of Cisco, co-chair of the working group. “We do believe LTE and 5G will be the catalyst for large-scale IoT deployments,” he said. The group will look at which applications require 5G and which don’t, he said. “There’ll be a large gray area, of course,” he said. “We’ll also take a look at market progress, coexistence and migration of 4G to 5G, some of the opportunities and some of the barriers.”
The group will also try to assess where the U.S. stands versus other nations worldwide, Gyurek said. Industry officials warned repeatedly the U.S. could be falling behind China. “What makes some countries move faster or slower?” he asked. The spectrum differences globally can have an impact, he said.
The U.S. wants to lead the world on 5G, Knapp said. “Where are we here in the United States?” he asked. “Have we got the right people talking to each other so that we engage early on, so that we don't fall behind in some of these sectors where we see terrific things happening?”
TAC is also continuing its focus on stolen cellphones, a top focus under former Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1412040049). Officials said as evidence of progress more than 250,000 devices have been checked using the stolen phone checker established by industry. Roberson said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai also is very focused on the issue.
TAC has made many recommendations over the years and they're taken seriously by the FCC, Knapp said. “Each year there has been a ton of recommendations,” he said. “So if you slow down a little bit, life would be a lot easier for us. That’s a joke.” For example, the FCC is working to eliminate obsolete regulations targeted by TAC last year, but most changes will have to be addressed through rulemaking, Knapp said. He stressed that, where possible, the FCC wants to rely on industry to develop standards. “We actually participate in standards activities maybe more than meets the eye,” he said. In areas of disagreement, such as on the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band, the FCC relied on industry to work out differences, he said.