The Wireless Innovation Forum (WInnForum), a non-profit mutual benefit corporation encouraging spectrum innovation and advancing radio technologies, has approved a new Release 2 specification (WINNF-TS-1001) defining enhancements to the baseline CBRS Operational and Functional Requirements. The new specification defines optional features and functionality that can be incorporated at any time, with a special focus on supporting specific vertical markets and their deployments.
The new release of the CBRS standards opens the way for substantial additional innovation in the CBRS band. Now anyone can rapidly add features to CBRS simply by contributing a suitable appendix to the Release 2 specification, and, pending committee approval and appropriate certification requirements, the feature is ready for adoption by CBRS users, equipment manufacturers, and Spectrum Access System (SAS) Administrators, on demand.
To address backward compatibility with the WInnForum Release 1 Baseline Standards, the only mandatory feature in Release 2 for a SAS (Spectrum Access System) or CBSD (Citizens Broadband radio Service Device) is to support the feature capability exchange between SASs and CBSDs.
Based on the Release 2 additions, exciting emerging technologies can be considered and implemented. Examples include:
- Single Frequency Group - a set of CBSDs that require a common radio frequency assignment and reassignment when frequency reassignment is necessary or preferred; and,
- 2D Antenna Patterns - requirements on how CBSD two-dimensional antenna patterns should be specified and used by the SAS to calculate CBSD antenna gain in a certain direction, taking both horizontal and vertical separation into account.
Additional emerging technologies can be considered in subsequent releases. Development is already underway on additional features to be added to Release 2 very shortly. Other planned features include enhanced group handling, flexible grants, and grant updates, indoor penetration loss measurements, refined propagation modeling, registration enhancements, and support for beamforming. The Release 2 specifications will include updates to the SAS to SAS and SAS to CBSD protocols to support these new features, and a Release 2 test specification allowing the industry to self-certify against requirements that do not impact Part 96.
The Wireless Innovation Forum’s contribution to standards enabling activity on the CBRS band is essential as deployments accelerate in 2020. The changes introduced in the WInnForum Release 2 standards will better support CBRS Alliance efforts to enable OnGo private LTE and 5G networks to use a broad choice of end-user devices.
Click here to know more about the new Release 2 specification, WINNF-TS-1001.
Click here to download WInnForum approved SSC CBRS Release Plan.
Click here to download the complete set of CBRS Baseline Standards.
