Eurocae and RTCA organised a joint summit on Spectrum Compatibility featuring 8 sessions over 2 days

Hundreds of aviation professionals around the world including CEOs, CTOs, researchers, professors, software engineers, safety experts, certification experts and regulators joined the Global Aviation Spectrum Summit on December 13-14 for interactive discussions on how aviation can best prepare for the future global environment as technology moves towards more efficient and effective usage of spectrum.

More than 400 attendees heard from regulators from around the world discussing - situational awareness in a changing regulatory environment, the options of shortening avionics lifecycle through adaptation, the C-band 5G roll out and the conflicting messages reported in the press and the public confusion about the level of risk. Also covered were future spectrum needs and applications and how standards can evolve to meet future needs.

“The event created an opportunity to hear directly from and collaborate with spectrum experts and professionals from around the world to ensure our standards development efforts continually evolve to represent the industry’s needs”, says Terry McVenes, President and CEO of RTCA. “Looking towards the future, it will be imperative that the aviation industry come together collaboratively with other non-aviation spectrum users to ensure the safe integration of new technologies that are so important to the advancement of our collective industries.”

 “Frequency spectrum is a vital, dynamic, and versatile resource pushing new frontiers in the 21st century. Available spectrum bands are scarce, but new technologies are enabling access by the public to new benefits available from the connectivity spectrum. This Spectrum Summit helped us to steer our standardisation activities to remain on the forefront of aviation, ensuring up to date, future proof and -essential standards contributing to safety in aviation”, says Anna von Groote, Director General at EUROCAE.

Summary of the sessions:

·        Lessons Learned and Moving Forward: With the C-band 5G roll out and the conflicting messages reported in the press, there was public confusion about the level of risk. The intersection of diverse industries in the spectrum domain, with vastly different approaches to operations, has resulted in more interaction across formerly unrelated industries.

·        Situational Awareness in a Changing Regulatory Environment: Aviation Spectrum is regulated by both Aviation and Telecommunication authorities. This session brought together both sides to discuss spectrum regulations as they exist in the United States, in Europe, and in a global context. The recent developments are inspiring innovation in the regulatory process, and the speakers wondered what spectrum stakeholders can expect in the future.

·        Shortening Avionics Lifecycle through Adaptation: Changes in technology and development tools have enabled much shorter lifecycles, even for avionics providing safety critical functionality. New aircraft use cases, such as UAS and AAM, are taking advantage of these capabilities with the goal of bringing lifecycles down to less than 5 years. Panelists discussed the technologies that are making this possible, the challenges to this paradigm shift, and the impact on safety and regulatory requirements.

·        Future Spectrum Needs and Applications: As new entrants push the boundaries in existing industries, there is a greater demand for spectrum to enable operations. Existing spectrum users need to make room to expand bandwidth to allow for innovation. Regulators around the world will continue to make adjustments to allocations in spectrum bands.

·        How Standards can Evolve to Meet Future Needs: EUROCAE and RTCA align the development and structure of their documents to directly meet FAA’s, EASA’s and other aviation regulatory needs. There are improvements and developments to be considered in the structure and content of the documents that will make the use of spectrum more robust by the aviation community. Panelists discussed how EUROCAE/RTCA can be responsive to the industry’s needs.

·        Working Together on Spectrum / What’s Next?: Now that we have identified the current and future environment aviation is facing in utilizing spectrum for safety critical functions, this session explored how we can work together to provide the best path forward.  Panelists shared the vision for future spectrum planning. 

The companies and organizations that participated were: AIA, Airbus, ALPA, American Airlines, ASRI, Boeing, CEPT, Dassault Aviation, EASA, ENRI, Eurocontrol, European Commission, FAA, Flyvercity, Honeywell, ICAO, ITU, MITRE, NASA, Reliable Robotics, T-Systems ,and uAvionix.

Attendees were able to ask questions of the regulators and technical experts as well as provide input and feedback.  EUROCAE and RTCA thank those who joined us for this event

You can watch the first day sessions here and the second day sessions here.

EUROCAE and RTCA standards development activities are open for participation – to join please contact us at eurocae@eurocae.net / membership@rtca.org