Spectrum Sharing Model Gaining Ground
An innovative spectrum sharing model in the 3.5 GHz Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band is coming closer to reality, NTIA senior spectrum advisor Derek Khlopin reported at the CBRS Alliance annual meeting in Charlotte, N.C. this week.
Since this band was initially targeted as a candidate to make available for commercial use nearly a decade ago, NTIA has engaged closely with the Department of Defense and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring the idea to fruition. The 3.5 GHz band affords an excellent mix of capacity and coverage capabilities, defining characteristics of mid-band spectrum, making the band appealing for future 5G deployment.
NTIA’s engineers and scientists in the Office of Spectrum Management and the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) in Boulder, Colorado, have worked closely through each stage of development with their counterparts in government and the private sector. From shrinking exclusion zones into smaller protection zones to designing the concept of dynamic protection areas (DPAs) to assisting the FCC in certifying the components of the spectrum sharing mechanism, it has been a long, complex process, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter by the day.