FCC ASKED TO SPELL OUT STAND ON ADAPTIVE-MODULATION WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

摘要

The Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition and equipment vendors are asking the FCC to shed light on whether companies are allowed to reduce data rates for point-to-point transmissions to keep a link in service, without violating commission rules. The stakes could be high, since the transmissions include wireless public- safety backhaul, cell site backhaul and control of the electric grid and natural gas and oil pipelines. Adaptive modulation is a major subject at the National Spectrum Management Association meeting this week. NSMA Working Group 3 is scheduled to take on the issue in a meeting Wednesday. During a panel discussion Tuesday, the benefits were hotly debated. "It's a new technology that holds great promise, and I think people want to see it happen," said Thomas Willis, a technical staff member at AT&T Labs. "But there are concerns about how it's going to be implemented and how it's going to affect systems that are existing in those bands and operating today." nnAdaptive modulation raises several questions that the commission hasn't considered, Willis said. "One of the issues is that the rules that the FCC wrote about spectral efficiency were before people were using adaptive modulation," he said. "The rules are sort of not up to date with the new technology and these FCC rules need to be looked at again under the light of what does this mean for deploying systems with adaptive modulation." In a recent filing, the wireless coalition was joined by Alcatel- Lucent, Motorola and Ericsson in seeking clarification of commission rules about adaptive modulation. The filing concerns 101.141(a)(3) of the rules, which imposes capacity and loading requirements on fixed service transmitters operating in the 4, 6, 10, and 11 GHz bands.