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[802SEC] Report to IEEE 802 Executive Committee on the progress of the TV Whitespace ECSG



EC Members,

 

Paul Nikolich asked me to provide a quick report on the progress of the
TV Whitespace ECSG.  The officers are myself as Chair of the ECSG, Steve
Shellhammer as Vice Chair, and Ranga Reddy as secretary.  The ECSG has
been holding Webex / Teleconference meetings every other week since
December 2nd.  We also held a set of face to face meetings at the
Wireless Interim in January.  And there have been numerous ad hoc
teleconferences. The ECSG was assigned the following tasks by the EC:

 

*          Assess the impact of the FCC White Space R&O on IEEE 802
activities

*          Identify Use Cases of TV White Space Spectrum

*          Identify what functions may be common across 802 technologies

*          Begin technical discussion on how to enable coexistence
between various 802 technologies in the shared TV white space spectrum

*          Prepare a Tutorial for March Plenary

*          Make recommendations to 802 EC by March 2009 on next steps

 

Here is a task by task report on our progress:

 

*          Assess the impact of the FCC White Space R&O on IEEE 802
activities

 

We have discussed this numerous times on various teleconferences.  A set
of individuals led by Stephen Rayment are currently working on a
presentation for the March Tutorial.  While there are many drafts
floating around, nothing is posted that I can reference you to.

 

It is expected the R&O will be posted in the register on 2/17/09.  That
means that responses are likely due 3/19/09.  The good news is that this
is right after the March Plenary.  Currently my expectation is that any
response from IEEE 802 will go through 802.18.  I know that 802.22 has
been working on a response for some time.  At this time I do not expect
any specific response from the ECSG (through 802.18 or otherwise).
However we are monitoring the responses from other groups.   

 

It is noted that there will also be international regulations for TV
Whitespace operations.  A presentation on TV Whitespaces for the Dutch
Antilles was made at the January interim.  For the tutorial we plan to
spend 15 minutes on the FCC R&O, but also 15 minutes on other regulatory
domains including the Dutch Antilles as well as the ITU/EU, Ofcom (UK),
Canada and Korea. 

 

Currently there are no ECSG recommendations concerning the FCC R&O or TV
Whitespace activities in other regulatory domains.

 

*          Identify Use Cases of TV White Space Spectrum

 

Nancy Vogtli has lead ad hoc activities to address this task.  The most
recently posted output from that ad hoc can be found at:

 

            
https://mentor.ieee.org/802-sg-whitespace/file/09/sg-whitespace-09-0007-
06-0000-ecsg-adhoc-use-case-slide-deck.ppt

 

A presentation will be made at the March Tutorial covering Use Cases.
It is believed the ECSG's work in this area is essentially done, except
for recommendations.

 

*          Identify what functions may be common across 802 technologies

 

This topic was discussed on a couple of teleconferences.  Richard Paine
prepared a document that summarizes possible common functions for
Whitespace operations which has been discussed within the group.  The
latest version can be found at:

 

https://mentor.ieee.org/802-sg-whitespace/file/09/sg-whitespace-09-0006-
03-0000-functions-common-across-the-802-family-of-protocols.doc 

 

There are currently no recommendations from the ECSG on common functions
for Whitespace operations within 802.

 

*          Begin technical discussion on how to enable coexistence
between various 802 technologies in the shared TV white space spectrum

 

Steve Shellhammer has led a very active ad hoc in this area.  I believe
they are still active.  You can find the most recent post at:

 

            
https://mentor.ieee.org/802-sg-whitespace/file/09/sg-whitespace-09-0029-
02-0000-coexistence-scenarios.ppt 

 

Steve has run some straw polls on possible recommendations in the area
of coexistence.  A couple seemed to have sufficient support to become
recommendations of the ECSG, but have not been voted yet.

 

*          Prepare a Tutorial for March Plenary

 

I have been leading ad hoc activities to prepare for the March Tutorial.
The current draft agenda with planned presenters is attached.  Note that
there is so much relevant material that people wanted to present it did
not seem that a single tutorial slot was enough.  The Chair of IEEE 802
was kind enough to provide an additional hour, but we still could not
cover all the material within that time.  So a second tutorial with
additional material is being planned for July.

 

The first 1.5 hours (a standard tutorial slot) of the March Tutorial
will focus on reporting out on the tasks assigned to the ECSG.  It is
recommended that all EC members attend (or at least review) the material
presented there.  The last hour will cover some of the existing
standards activities currently looking at TV Whitespaces, and report out
on the Whitespace security ad hoc that has run in conjunction with the
ECSG.  There were a large number of technical areas where individuals
wanted to present to IEEE 802 on various aspects of Whitespace
technology.  But there simply isn't time.  So all that material is being
deferred to July.

 

*          Make recommendations to 802 EC by March 2009 on next steps

 

While the ESCG has made a lot of progress, we have not yet made any
specific recommendations on next steps.   We are currently running a
series of strawpolls to see where consensus may exist for specific
recommendations.  I do not expect any votes to be held till the
teleconference before, or the week of the March plenary.

 

 

Other Activities

 

There are at least two other activities of the ECSG that require special
mention:

 

*          The Whitespace security ad hoc

 

A number of ECSG members felt that Whitespace security was a topic of
special importance and formed an ad hoc lead by Alex Reznik to discuss
it.  The latest output from the security Ad Hoc can be found at:

 

            
https://mentor.ieee.org/802-sg-whitespace/file/09/sg-whitespace-09-0026-
03-0000-security-ad-hoc-report-draft.ppt

 

Some ECSG recommendations may result from this work.

 

 

*           The Electronic participation experiment

 

Some members within the ECSG were vocal about desiring webex /
teleconference access to the ECSG meetings at the wireless interim.  The
IEEE 802 Chair gave us permission for 'electronic participation' in the
interim so long as electronic participants were not given attendance
credit or voting rights.  Permission was also conditioned on electronic
participation being set up as an experiment with a hypothesis and
metrics to see if the hypothesis holds.  A hypothesis and metrics (via
straw polls) were developed.  The various issues associated with
electronic participation were studied, and the Chair of the ECSG made a
special trip to the wireless interim just to conduct the electronic
participation experiment. 

 

The electronic participation experiment was conducted.  A number of
stawpolls were held, and the results have been presented on the
Whitespace and EC reflectors.  The chair has also presented his personal
opinions on the experiment to the EC and ECSG.  A formal presentation
will be made to interested EC members at the March Plenary.

 

 That completes this report.

 

Mat

 

 

Matthew Sherman 
Chair, IEEE802 Whitespace ECSG 

BAE Systems -  Electronics, Intelligence & Support (EI&S)

Electronic Solutions (ES)

Communication & Tactical Networks (C&TN)
Office: +1 973.633.6344 
Cell: +1 973.229.9520 
email:  matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
<mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com>  

 


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Attachment: Whitespace Tutorial Request Form_v2.doc
Description: Whitespace Tutorial Request Form_v2.doc