Compatibility of airport surface wireless networks in the 5091–5150 MHZ band

Standards are being developed for airport surface wireless networks. Such networks have been denoted as Airport Network and Location Equipment (ANLE) or Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System (AeroMACS). The term ANLE/AeroMACS will be used in this paper. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to use portions of the 5000-5250 MHz band, including the 5091-5150 MHz subband, for the future implementation of ANLE/AeroMACS networks. When implemented, they must coexist with other radio-frequency (RF) systems operating in the same frequency band. The 5091-5150 MHz subband has also been allocated, on a co-primary basis, to non-geostationary mobile-satellite-service (MSS) feeder uplinks. Therefore, ANLE/AeroMACS networks need to meet the MSS RF interference (RFI) criterion identified by the ITU in order to coexist with MSS. The ANLE/AeroMACS network architecture is based on the IEEE 802.16-2009 standard, and uses a channel bandwidth of 5 MHz. To complement the initial 5-MHz scenario presented at the ICNS 2011 conference, additional scenarios are analyzed in this paper in order to more completely evaluate the impact of different 5-MHz channel configurations on ANLE/AeroMACS-to-MSS compatibility. These scenarios help determine the impact of various base station (BS) configurations and BS parameters. Our results show that, given the parameters of ANLE/AeroMACS networks and MSS feeder uplinks identified in the paper, the RFI criterion is met, and bandsharing between these systems is feasible.