The International Civil Aviation Organisation general assembly has given the green light to the launch of a campaign to secure guarantees of radio frequency spectrum to meet commercial aerospace industry requirements, including the allocation of common global bandwidth for the safe operation of unmanned air vehicles.
The assembly agreed on 28 September to co-ordinated action by member states as well as from the ICAO secretariat to engage with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the 2011 World Radio Congress (WRC).
The assembly, held at ICAO headquarters in Montreal, also agreed to release funding "as a matter of high priority" to support the new engagement process.
The resolution followed warnings from ICAO that "as demand for spectrum from non-aviation users was constantly growing, aviation faced increasing competition for the limited available spectrum, in particular from commercial telecommunications services".
The assembly heard that ICAO's existing lobbying efforts before the ITU and at WRC meetings "had proven insufficient to guarantee that aviation requirements are consistently met".
The ICAO secretariat described radio frequency spectrum allocations as a "prerequisite for the safety of civil aviation and the effective implementation of the communications, navigation, and surveillance [and] air traffic management systems".
The assembly heard warnings from the US delegation that without specific spectrum allocations for UAVs, the potential for global growth of that sector would be stillborn. It also noted that the 2007 WRC, starting late in October, would not be discussing UAV requirements.
A working paper prepared by the US delegation called for ICAO to "lead the global effort to identify and propose a frequency spectrum bandwidth for unmanned aircraft systems".
This should include development of a common ICAO policy position the paper argued, and the spearheading of efforts to have spectrum allocation for UAVs determined at the 2011 WRC meeting: "If this opportunity to establish a consensus international position in spectrum allocation for unmanned aircraft system operations in 2011 is lost, the next opportunity to secure spectrum will not come until 2015. Acquisition of frequency spectrum beyond 2011 will significantly delay this key industry and technology from moving forward".
The US working paper warned that "without ICAO leadership to obtain a present a consensus position on unmanned aircraft system spectrum requirements, non-standard spectrum use could complicate unmanned aircraft system development and global interoperability".
The Montreal meeting agreed "that ICAO needed to strengthen the support and resource commitment to protect the aeronautical spectrum, which was critical to the international aviation community".
It also agreed that it is "essential that aviation requirements for radio frequency spectrum be strongly supported by all ICAO contracting states so as to ensure that aviation requirement for safety of life services would be duly presented and understood".
Source: FlightGlobal.com
