IARU continued engagement in the ITU‑R WRC-23 preparations in the CEPT RTO during May 2021 at the third meeting of the Conference Preparatory Group (CPG). The CPG is the parent group in CEPT that oversees the development of the CEPT Briefs for each of the WRC agenda items and reviews the progress in the individual project teams under the CPG umbrella. IARU provided a contribution putting forward the agreedpreliminary IARU positions for these agenda items. IARU’s overall objective is to safeguard the allocations to the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite services in the co and adjacent frequency bands within the scope of each agenda item. The CEPT briefs have a specific section in which the views of all the recognised international and regional organisations can be placed and the IARU views are now in this section of the draft briefs for each of the agenda items of interest.

CPG Project Team	WRC-23 Agenda Items	IARU Interests
PTA	1.12, 1.13, 1.14, 2, 4, 9.1 a), 9.1 c) ‚9.1 d) and 10.	1.12, 1.14 and 9.1 a)
PTB	1.15, 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19 and 7.	1.18
PTC	1.1, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11 and 9.1 b).	9.1 b)
PTD	1.5.	-
PT1	1.2, 1.3 and 1.4.	1.2

The meeting also heard presentations from other Region 1 RTO’s as well as organisations from R2 and R3 about their own regional preparations. These presentations and the draft CEPT Briefs for each of the agenda items can be found here.

The IARU SRLC continues to be active in all the CEPT project teams dealing with the WRC preparation.

The SRLC Report on the CPG meeting is available here. 

Over the period 28^thApril until 11^thMay 2021, the preparatory work for WRC-23 agenda item 9.1bcontinued in ITU‑R Working Party 5A (WP5A). An ITU‑R report is under development detailing the technical and operational characteristics of the amateur services use of the band 1240 – 1300 MHz. As usual, the IARU participated in the meeting and delivered key information on the global amateur band plans in this key microwave band and the relationship to the radio navigation satellite services (RNSS) operating co-frequency across the band. This information is vital to ensure the amateur services are realistically represented in the studies as they move forward. For this reason the information was formally made available to ITU‑R Working Party 4C for their consideration as they develop the technical studies.

The work on this topic will continue throughout the year both in ITU‑R and in the regional telecommunications organisations and the IARU is committed to ensure every group hears the amateur position on this important microwave band.

The report from this last WP5A meeting is here.

The IARUMS Region 1 Newsletter April 2021 is now available.
Click on the link to read it!

IARU is continuing to represent the amateur services interests in the 23cm band Galileo/GLONASS radio navigation satellite service coexistence discussions in the CEPT project teams.

The most recent CEPT SE40 project team meeting was held from 24^th to 26^th March 2021 and the IARU R1 was represented by Barry Lewis, G4SJH (Region 1 SRLC chair). At that meeting the first coexistence calculations were introduced by one CEPT administration, based on some initial assumptions about the amateur service operation. The IARU is continuing to work with the regulators to refine the details of these assumptions and make them and the calculations more representative of typical amateur station characteristics and band usage. These first calculations are considered only as a starting point and the meeting agreed that further work is needed to develop the calculations into a more comprehensive study. 

Measurement campaigns have shown that the potential for coexistence depends very much on the frequency of the amateur service transmissions in the 23cm band with respect to the RNSS receiver bandwidth. This aspect needs to be considered more carefully once the initial scenarios and calculations are agreed. 

In addition the IARU continues to have questions about the protection criteria required by the RNSS receivers and in particular how they relate to RNSS operational and service provision behaviour. IARU has ensured alignment of the amateur and amateur service information being used in CEPT with that being used in the parallel work in the ITU‑R relating to WRC-23 AI 9.1b.