Adjacent channel compatibility between IMT and ubiquitous FSS Earth Stations in the 3.4–3.8 GHz frequency band

Abstract

This study has investigated the mitigations necessary for successful compatibility between International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) services and Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) Earth Stations operating in adjacent frequency bands. We consider a problem where IMT services operate in the 3.4–3.6 GHz frequency band and FSS Earth Stations operate in the adjacent 3.6–3.8 GHz band (both bands are within the frequency range designated C-band). The results presented in this paper are applicable to other boundaries between IMT and FSS operating in C-band. This is an adjacent band compatibility problem, hence the mitigation considered is based on frequency separation. We firstly perform a co-frequency interference analysis and then determine the Net Filter Discrimination available for a range of possible frequency separations including Guard Bands. These calculations rest on some assumptions regarding the IMT transmitter and FSS receiver spectrum masks. We present some results which show that an 18 MHz Guard Band is sufficient to mitigate interference. This analysis is based on the median aggregate interference-to-noise ratio $$\Sigma I/N$$ delivered by our co-frequency analysis, using a − 10 dB threshold and covering all of the spectrum mask combinations considered in the study.