CSMAC Starts Work With New Focus on 6G, Propagation Modeling, Ultra Wideband
NTIA’s reconstituted Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee had its first meeting Friday since April 2021, when it wrapped up work that started in the Trump administration (see 2104080060). Under President Donald Trump, CSMAC didn’t meet July 2018-October 2019 and NTIA didn’t have a permanent administrator for most of that administration.
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CSMAC got its marching orders at Friday's virtual meeting, with subcommittees focused on possible changes to the spectrum relocation fund, the potential impact of 6G on government services, improvements to electromagnetic compatibility and the need for modifications to ultra-wideband rules.
“NTIA is really working towards a coordinated, national approach to spectrum use, with an emphasis on coordinated,” said NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson. “We are going to be leaning on new, innovative technology to ensure that we can meet the spectrum needs of our country in the future, especially at a time of increasing scarcity, increasing demand,” he said.
NTIA is also working to coordinate across the federal government, especially with the FCC, Davidson said. “We are very committed to making sure that the commission and NTIA and other federal agencies are all working together well, and in lockstep,” he said. Davidson noted the FCC has a liaison on CSMAC, just as NTIA does on the FCC’s Technology Advisory Council. NTIA needs to look “five years out, 10 years out” on spectrum, he said. “We can only imagine how much things are going to change in the next decade,” he said.
Davidson said he didn’t attend CSMAC meetings in the past but was aware of the work it was doing. CSMAC always attracted “dedicated professionals with a wide range of experience,” he said. “It’s always had a commitment to evidence- and science-based decision-making that we feel is extremely important today,” he said: “I’m very committed to making sure that you have the ability to follow the science and the engineering wherever they lead you.”
Leaders of the subcommittees reported that work is just getting started.
“Research and planning is well underway for 6G” and the U.S. wants to lead the world, said Carolyn Kahn, Mitre chief spectrum economist and co-chair of that subcommittee. “We wanted to get started early and really lay down a foundation for success for the U.S. as a leader in 6G,” she said. The group will look at potential impacts on government users and bands that may be available, including in the terahertz range, she said.
The electromagnetic compatibility subcommittee will look at how to prevent “never-ending battles at the edge” of spectrum bands, said co-chair Thomas Dombrowsky, senior engineering adviser at DLA Piper. “We actually had stuff making it into the nightly news, which I didn’t think would ever happen in my career,” he said. The group will look at “how radar and other systems can better coexist in co-channel, non-co-channel areas,” he said.
Another focus will be on propagation modeling, and how it can be improved as “we keep pushing into new and different bands” some of which “have never been modeled,” Dombrowsky said. When carriers started using high-frequency bands “there was no real propagation modeling available because no one had really looked at mobile use at millimeter-wave,” he said. Another question is what role NTIA can play, he said.
Dale Hatfield, senior fellow at Silicon Flatirons, encouraged an early focus on enforcement. “Rules are not valuable unless they can be enforced,” he said: “If they’re not enforced, there’s essentially no rule.”
UWB “has been something of a neglected technology, not studied by any organization that I know of,” said Dennis Roberson of Roberson and Associates, co-chair of the subcommittee investigating that topic. Concerns raised by NTIA “seem to be around the proliferation of ultra-wideband and the waivers that are coming in that may collectively cause damage to systems that are important to the government,” he said.
The federal government has made 535 MHz of mid-band spectrum available in recent years, said Charles Cooper, associate administrator in the NTIA Office of Spectrum Management. “We continue to take a close look … at what additional spectrum resources can be made available, all while maintaining the federal agencies’ access to spectrum,” he said. The top focus now is 3.1-3.45 GHz with DOD evaluating the potential to “repurpose some, or all of the band, through sharing,” he said.
NTIA will help the CSMAC subcommittees in any way it can, Cooper said: “You have access to all the resources and support you need for your research.”