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2021-11-22

The Canadian government has limited use of 5G communications at certain frequencies around airports due to concern that the frequencies could interfere with aircraft altimeters. The US government is currently considering what steps are needed to mitigate that possibility after temporarily halting a similar expansion of 5G usage in response to concerns from the aviation industry. Full story: 

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By Sandra Stafford September 5, 2021 9:00AM

The mobile wireless industry is preparing to deploy 5G all across the country, and 6G is already in development — but millions of people in the United States don’t even have access to household internet.

This differential in access is called the “digital divide,” and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to bridge it.

Part of its plan is to let mobile wireless companies use broadcast spectrum in the 3.7-3.98 GHz band, commonly referred to as “C-band.” With a license to use C-band, wireless companies can provide 5G service through relatively small base stations. This would make it easier to bring 5G to rural areas, where providing internet through fiber requires vast, expensive infrastructure for relatively few customers. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile spent over $80 billion at auction to get these C-band licenses.

The FCC formally issued the policy changes in March 2020. The report and order (R&O) was the result of nearly three years of consideration, during which members of the public were invited to comment on the matter. There was a wide range of interested parties, from NPR to the Mormon Church, but aviation industry groups have been among the most involved.

Aviation industry speaks up

The aviation industry’s concerns revolve around a piece of equipment called a radar altimeter (or radio altimeter). The radar altimeter is used by all kinds of aircraft to measure altitude, the distance between the aircraft and the ground. It works by transmitting a signal toward the ground, then determining altitude based on the time it takes the signal to reflect off the ground and back to the aircraft.

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These 5G sources can also create “spurious emissions.” These are unwanted signals in the 4.2-4.4 GHz band. Since these signals are within the same bandwidth radar altimeters are supposed to receive, they can’t be filtered out. The radar altimeter has no way to tell them apart from the returning signal, so it may determine altitude incorrectly.

The weaker signal gets washed out by the stronger one.

A false altitude report is a serious error that can cause several other systems to respond inappropriately. Radar altimeters operate through the entire flight, and the data isn’t just displayed to the pilot. Altitude data feeds into important systems, like the Traffic Collision Avoidance System and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast System, which monitors the airspace to prevent midair collisions. In October 2020, the RTCA Report shed some light on the danger of false altitude reports during landing.

Read the article at https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/airlines-warn-5g-risky/

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News Analysis MIKE DANO, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies

8/17/2021

Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile collectively spent almost $100 billion on C-band spectrum licenses for 5G earlier this year. Now, just a few months before that spectrum is scheduled to be put to use commercially, a large group of major aerospace and airline companies is warning the FCC that 5G operations in that spectrum band could have disastrous effects on the nation’s air travel.

“Major disruptions to passenger air travel, commercial transport and critical helicopter operations can be expected from the rollout of 5G under the commission’s order,” the group wrote to the FCC.

The group’s basic concern centers on how 5G operations in C-band spectrum could affect radio altimeters in aircraft. The wireless industry has generally rejected such interference concerns.

Interfering altitude

Nonetheless, the development casts a cloud over the hopes of AT&T and Verizon to supercharge their 5G aspirations with spectrum that would undoubtedly improve their services. While Verizon and AT&T today offer 5G services that generally aren’t much faster than 4G, midband C-band spectrum promises to support much speedier connections across wide swaths of the country. Already T-Mobile is using similar midband spectrum – in the 2.5GHz band, just below the 3.7GHz C-band – to offer 5G download speeds around 350 Mbit/s.

That’s likely why the FCC’s C-band spectrum auction raised a record $81 billion in total bids – a figure that doesn’t include billions of additional dollars operators are spending to free the spectrum quickly and to install C-band transmission radios around the country.

However, at least a portion of all that spending could be threatened by the aerospace and airline industry, which is warning that 5G transmissions in C-band spectrum could interfere with radio altimeters used in everything from helicopters to commercial aircraft.

“Such harmful interference could lead to an escalation of negative outcomes, from missed approaches, delays, diversions and flight cancellations, to the shutting down of runways on an indefinite basis,” wrote a large number of airline and aerospace trade associations and companies including Aerospace Industries Association, Airlines for America, American Airlines, The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation, among others. In meetings with FCC officials, the group also “discussed the critical role of accurate radar altitude during escape maneuvers that can be required by large commercial air transport and other aircraft during wind shear events and that occur near the ground. Loss of, or incorrect, radar altitude due to flexible use interference would greatly reduce chances of a successful safe outcome.”

Radio altimeters help measure the altitude of an object and are common in aircraft of all types.

Dismissing the concerns

In previous filings to the FCC on the topic, the wireless industry has generally rejected such interference concerns. “The commission correctly determined that C-band 5G can operate without causing interference, let alone harmful interference, to neighboring services in nearby bands,” the CTIA, the main trade group representing AT&T, Verizon and other major wireless companies, wrote in an April filing to the FCC. “The commission should dismiss the aviation industry’s unsupported claims.”

Read more at: https://www.lightreading.com/5g/airlines-warn-of-major-disruptions-from-5g-in-c-band/d/d-id/771518

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By Dan Namowitz

Source: AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association)

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2021/may/20/aviation-safety-in-focus-as-fcc-expands-5g

The wireless communications industry has a “deficient level of understanding” of the threat to radar-altimeter system operation and flight safety posed by “flexible” uses of the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz band, a concern that should prompt the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider its policy of repurposing the C-band, a coalition of aviation organizations said in a regulatory filing.

The risk of harmful interference with radar altimeters that operate in the band just above that frequency range could have been avoided if the wireless-industry trade group CTIA participated in a technical assessment performed by a multi-stakeholder group of the aviation technical advisory organization RTCA, wrote AOPA and 19 other groups in a May 12 letter to the FCC.

“As a result, any use of the conclusions by CTIA performed without the support of rigorous technical analysis are dangerous for the Commission to consider,” the aviation groups said, defending RTCA’s findings on C-band mobile telecommunications interference with radar altimeter operations.

The letter was filed in response to a March 2020 FCC order in which the FCC noted that “by licensing only up to 3.98 GHz as flexible-use spectrum, we are providing a 220-megahertz guard band between new services in the lower C-band and radio altimeters and Wireless Avionics Intra-Communications services operating in the 4.2-4.4 GHz band.”

The letter added that CTIA’s position “actually underscores both the need for the Commission to grant the pending Petition to Ensure Aviation Safety and the urgency for the Commission to work with the Federal Aviation Administration… to develop appropriate mitigations before 3700-3980 MHz operations commence in December 2021.”

Read more at: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2021/may/20/aviation-safety-in-focus-as-fcc-expands-5g

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“The utilisation of 5G devices onboard aircraft could lead to risks of interference that could potentially result in errors in altitude readings,”  a spokesman for the agency told AFP.

The potential phenomenon is due to “signal interference from a close frequency source of a strength that is similar or even superior to that of  altimeters.” 

Read more at: https://www.enca.com/news/5g-phones-may-interfere-aircraft-french-regulator

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By: Valerie Insinna and Aaron Mehta, December 21 at 5:00 AM

WASHINGTON — As part of a broader move to boost the 5G industry in the United States, the Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 8 began auctioning a portion of C-band electromagnetic spectrum, a move the committee’s chairman, Ajit Pai, celebrated as “a big day for American consumers and U.S. leadership in 5G.”

But, in the weeks leading up to the auction, more than a dozen commercial aviation groups warned the sale could, as one study put it, lead to “catastrophic failures” with the potential for “multiple fatalities.”

At the core of the concerns are radar altimeters, a critical piece of aviation technology used by military, commercial and civil aircraft of all types — including helicopters and unmanned aerial systems — to measure the distance between an aircraft and the ground.

The aviation groups worry that 5G operations on the spectrum sold by the FCC could cause interference that would provide inaccurate readings on altimeters or cause their failure outright, in essence leaving pilots unaware of how far they are from the ground and potentially leading to crashes over the United States.

Read more at: https://www.defensenews.com/2020/12/21/the-military-is-scrambling-to-understand-the-aviation-crash-risk-from-a-new-5g-sale/

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By Todd Shields, Alan Levin, and Helene Fouquet December 7, 2020, 7:31 PM GMT+2Updated on December 8, 2020, 12:42 AM GMT+2

• Study warns of interference with electronics on airliners
•  FCC says use of airwaves is safe and will open auction Tuesday

A plan to redeploy spectrum for super-fast 5G wireless networks is sparking concern among aviation safety experts that it could result in interference with the electronics on aircraft, potentially leading to crashes.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to begin an auction on Tuesday for airwaves in the so-called C-band frequencies that are used by satellite providers but the agency wants to re-assign for 5G. The agency says the sale is an important step in maintaining U.S. leadership in the next generation of wireless service.

But some fear that assigning the frequencies to ground transmitters near airports that will be used for 5G networks could interfere with electronics used by aircraft as they land.

Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-07/plane-crash-risk-seen-rising-on-fcc-plan-to-expand-5g-spectrum?fbclid=IwAR32n1nncy6JvN1Y_3CgHqf4tzU

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