RLANs and weather radars

in the 5 GHz band

rev 3
Jan Kruys
Dec 7, 2006

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

Purpose
Collect and document that technical side of the issues
at a high level
Get all concerned on the same line

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

Intro

The ITU-R in 2003 defined sharing criteria for WLANs operating

in the 5GHz range (5.25 5.725 GHz)
These criteria include detection requirements:
1 usec pulse length
>> 1 pulses per sweep (depending on radar sweep rate)

Canada has always insisted on special protection for its weather

radars (5.6 5.65 GHz)
They are economically important
They are hard to detect due to their pulse type and scan patterns

Other countries, notably Australia and Japan, are adopting

Canadas stance
This could lead to blocking of the 5.6 GHz subband by the ITU-R
The loss of capacity is significant

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Airborne Wi-fi is not considered here due to its very different

nature
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

The technical problem at first sight

Weather radars use short pulses (necessary to get resolution):
typically .5 usec
Detection requires high sensitivity which potentially leads to many false positive
detections
Detection during PACKET RECEIVE is also a problem

Weather radars use complex and sometimes fast scan patterns

while analyzing cloud systems
Means we see few pulses per burst and therefore we cannot separate false
positive detections from real detections
This leads to a high false alarm rate and therefore significant service
disruption due to the 30 minute re-entry delay
Means long intervals in which we see nothing: as much as 10 minutes
Radar operators worry that we will be transmitting in their band while they
are looking the other way and cause interference when they do look our way

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

Looking more closely

The service interruption issue arises from the requirement to do inservice monitoring of the channel:
Traffic interferes with detection and therefore we may not see a short
burst of pulses
New trends in weather radar design point towards less but longer
pulses (with pulse compression)

The industry does not want to vacate this band for no good reason
A (false) detection means vacating the channel for at least 30 minutes
Service interruption is an issue but only close to radar sites and onchannel
Locally determined channel selection in the footprint of the radar
can avoid interference without closing the band nation/world-wide

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

Short pulse detection

Off-line detection of weather radars should not be an issue
The RLAN receiver has nothing to do but listen see also below.
The channels that need extra care are known/can be known locally

At the edge of the radar (horizon) footprint, the radar signal is still
very strong:
Approx -20 dBm for a 20KW radar with a 40 dBi antenna
This is easily detected - even if the pulses are shorter than 1 usec but
not while the channel is being used for WLAN traffic
We need many pulses to assure no false detection

Weather radars have variable scan patterns in sweep rate and

elevation.
We will only see them at low to medium scan rates that deliver enough
pulses to compensate for the shorter pulse widths

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Weather radar activity and footprint

These radars operate 24/365 if
you see them once you will see
them always
Allows RLANs to employ off-line
detection to establish being in view of
a weather radar or not
If a radar is seen, it will always be
seen
If no radar is seen in the weather
radar band, it will never be seen

Radar footprints are limited

geographically
Inside that footprint, the above
applies
Outside that footprint, the radar is not
seen or affected

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This example was provided by Environment

Canada

Analysis
1. Some radars / radar scan types cannot be detected while the
RLAN is using the channel (ISM)
Because of short pulses or short burst length
There is no issue during Channel Availability Checking (CAC)

2. All of these radars are fixed and in more or less continuous

service
3. All of these radars are stationary and have fixed footprint
Short pulse detection is required only within the foor print

4. A 10 minute CAC + channel blocking would meet the needs of

the (fixed) radar community and the RLAN community
Once per 24 hours would be enough
Mark the channel as available or not available
Requires that operators maintain consistent operational schedules

5. ISM assures protection of mobile radars that appear out of the

blue
Due to ISM, no RLAN will interfere with a weather radar for more than 5
minutes at any time of day: one sweep at the right scan rate will silence all
RLANs within range
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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Conclusion
The weather radar issue stems mostly from imprecise
regulatory language
Does not distinguish between CAC and ISM as means to achieve the
applicable protection requirements

The issue can be removed by:

Restricting the requirement to detect sub micro second pulses to CAC in
5600-5650 MHz
Allowing a 24 hr validity period for a CAC for fixed (weather) radars
Detection means the channel must be blocked for 24 hrs
No detection means use of the channel is allowed with ISM
and with normal 60 second re-entry CAC

Regulatory Impact:
Rule change as per above (partially already implemented in
EU)

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cisco Confidential

Another perspective
Knowledge = power. By ignoring the cognitive side of the story we
limit our capability to solve these problems
Knowledge of channels, location, operational patterns, etc

The FCC is committed to Cognitive Radio techniques to facilitate

spectrum sharing
802.11 TGY is riding that commitment it develops means to share presence
information between spectrum users
We should leverage this FCC policy and propose off-air means to facilitate
spectrum sharing with, in this case, weather radars

Cognitive spectrum sharing can use geographical data to allow

systems outside a given radars horizon to rely exclusively on the
current DFS profile
Government, the radar operators or a third party can maintain the necessary
data base on the web
System installers would have to check that data base in fact it can be
automated

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Summary
The weather radar issue can be solved by resorting to
off-line detection and a validity period for fixed radars
Assures that the radar channel is not used - but only within the
radar horizon

Removes the motivation to block the 5600-5650 MHz band (Australia)

Data base access to check proximity of weather radars would add
resilience

Regulators and radar operators have to be engaged

First talk with key regulators, then involve WFA formally.

Eventually we want the regulatory language to be

changed to broaden the means of radar detection and
avoidance

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2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Questions/Comments?

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