Safe Flying: New Sop Soon on 5G Airwave Infra Around Airports

What’s in today’s article:

• News Summary

Why In News:

• The aviation and telecom departments will shortly roll out a plan to ensure safe flight operations around airports with 5G airwave infrastructure.
• This is being done after India’s aviation regulator flagged concerns about interference that 5G signals could cause, potentially posing a challenge to safe airline operations.

News Summary

• The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is currently preparing an operational guideline to ensure safe flight operations around airports with 5G airwave infrastructure.
• The plan includes:
  • telecom companies setting up infrastructure powering 5G networks in the country away from the flight path around airports,
  • carrying low power signals in such areas and
  • a plan to upgrade the altimeter of all aircraft operating in the country by August 2023.

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Concerns around 5G interference with flight operations

• Concerns in India
  • In September, the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) wrote to the telecom department flagging concerns over the likely interference of 5G C-Band spectrum with aircraft radio altimeters.
    • A radio altimeter is an instrument that provides direct height-above-terrain information to various aircraft systems.
    • These altimeters as well as a part of the 5G telecom services operate in the mid C-Band frequency range.
    • 5G terrestrial signals typically operate at a very heavy power level compared to flight altimeters. This increases the possibility of interference.
  • Earlier this year, the 6,000-pilot-strong Federation of Indian Pilots had also written to the Civil Aviation Ministry raising similar concerns.
• Similar concerns in US
  • So far, US aviation authorities have reported about 85 cases of 5G waves impacting flight operations near the airport.
  • In the US, an agreement between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the telecom operators resulted in a delay in rollout of 5G services in the C-Band near airports that were assessed to be difficult for pilots to make visual approaches.
    • Earlier this year, Air India had to cancel some of its flights to the US.
    • This was done amid concerns that the rollout of 5G mobile services in the US could potentially interfere with aircraft navigation systems.
    • Since then, the FAA has issued several directives to airlines to install certain filters or modify their equipment to ensure that 5G airwaves do not interfere with their navigation systems.
• Concerns raised by other industries
  • With the guard band between the 5G telecom and broadcast services narrowing sharply, broadcasters have cited multiple incidents of disruptions.
    • A guard band is a narrow frequency range that separates two ranges of wider frequency.
    • This ensures that simultaneously used communication channels do not experience interference, which would result in decreased quality for both transmissions.
  • They raised concerns over possible interference and potential outages once full-scale 5G services are launched across the country.

C-Band

• C-band refers to the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum allotted for satellite transmissions in the 4GHz to 8GHz frequency range.
• The C band is used for many satellite communications transmissions, some Wi-Fi devices, some cordless telephones, as well as some Radar and weather radar systems.
• For telecom service providers, the C-Band presents a sweet spot for rolling out 5G services, ensuring coverage as well as high bandwidth, resulting in faster internet speeds.
• For aircraft operations, the use of altimeters in this band ensures highly precise measurements of the plane’s altitude.