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The 23cm band 1240 – 1300MHz is an impor­tant resource for radio ama­teurs inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing their knowl­edge of the tech­nolo­gies and prop­er­ties of high­er fre­quen­cy microwave bands. The band­width avail­able facil­i­tates devel­op­ment of many appli­ca­tions includ­ing wide band modes such as Ama­teur TV and pro­vides an entry point and spring­board for the more tech­ni­cal­ly and engi­neer­ing mind­ed indi­vid­u­als to inves­ti­gate high­er fre­quen­cy bands above the 23cm band. It sup­ports not only the devel­op­ment of the RF relat­ed aspects but also cod­ing and sig­nal pro­cess­ing tech­niques that are at the core of mod­ern radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions systems.

WRC-23 Agen­da Item 9.1b is a “Review of the ama­teur ser­vice and the ama­teur-satel­lite ser­vice allo­ca­tions in the fre­quen­cy band 1 240‑1 300 MHz to deter­mine if addi­tion­al mea­sures are required to ensure pro­tec­tion of the radion­av­i­ga­tion-satel­lite (space-to-Earth) ser­vice oper­at­ing in the same band in accor­dance with Res­o­lu­tion 774 (WRC‑19);”

There are sev­er­al RNSS con­stel­la­tions includ­ing COMPASS, GALILEO, GLONASS and QZSS with oper­a­tional spec­trum in dif­fer­ing parts of the ama­teur 23cm band allocation.

The review has two elements:

“1 to per­form the detailed review of the dif­fer­ent sys­tems and appli­ca­tions used in the ama­teur ser­vice and ama­teur-satel­lite ser­vice allo­ca­tions with­in the fre­quen­cy band 1 240‑1 300 MHz;

2 tak­ing into account the results of the above review, to study pos­si­ble tech­ni­cal and oper­a­tional mea­sures to ensure the pro­tec­tion of RNSS (space-to-Earth) receivers from the ama­teur and ama­teur-satel­lite ser­vices with­in the fre­quen­cy band 1 240 – 1 300 MHz, with­out con­sid­er­ing the removal of these ama­teur and ama­teur-satel­lite ser­vices allo­ca­tions,”

This agen­da item was pro­posed in ear­ly 2019 for WRC-23 by Europe and was opposed by the IARU in the Euro­pean prepara­to­ry group. The IARU accepts that as a sec­ondary ser­vice in the band the ama­teur ser­vices are duty bound to avoid cre­at­ing inter­fer­ence to pri­ma­ry ser­vices (includ­ing RNSS and RADIOLOCATION) but as the issue had arisen in the con­text of the GALILEO sys­tem in Europe, the IARU pro­posed to study the top­ic only in CEPT. (In CEPT work­ing groups it is a work item too). How­ev­er, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion insist­ed on the top­ic mov­ing for­ward as a WRC agen­da item. The impact of this is to bring the top­ic into a wider glob­al dis­cus­sion involv­ing oth­er glob­al RNSS sys­tems such as the Chi­nese COMPASS sys­tem and the Japan­ese QZSS sys­tem into the scope. 

The IARU believes that the poten­tial for wide scale inter­fer­ence to the RNSS ser­vices is being exag­ger­at­ed and has been required to par­tic­i­pate in all the dis­cus­sions (in CEPT and ITU‑R) in order to ensure that an accu­rate and fact based under­stand­ing of the use of the 23cm band by the ama­teur ser­vices is con­sid­ered in the stud­ies. The IARU posi­tion for AI 9.1 b can be found in this document.

With­in the ITU‑R, ele­ment 1 above is under­way in Study Group 5, Work­ing Par­ty 5A. Ele­ment 2 is main­ly under­de­vel­op­ment in Study Group 4, Work­ing Par­ty 4C.