Aviation Pros - Joe Petrie
As telecommunications companies, airlines and the FAA battle over the widespread deployment of 5G and its impact on aviation, a lot of people in the industry have questions as to what’s at the heart of the issue and what can be done to resolve it.
Thomas Neubauer, vice president of innovations at TEOCO spoke with Airport Business to address the big issues at hand and explain what and how airports could be impacted by the rollout.
Why is 5G such an issue for aviation?
It’s not 5G, but the spectrum it’s being used on. Neubauer says 5G in the U.S. can be deployed at different frequency band: 700MHz, 850MHz, 1.9GHz, 2.5GHz and now in the C-band (3.7 – 3.98GHz).
Neubauer says only the latter is causing these interference problems with the altimeter radar given its vicinity to spectrum of altimeter radar in aircraft. Altimeter frequency filters aren’t very selective, so there are issues created with the new spectrum
