A solution advocated by ATDI to prevent interference on continental Europe is now being replicated in the UK.

The winner of a British spectrum auction later in the year will need to install filters in nearly a million homes to separate television signals from 4G mobile frequencies.

It is a concept which helps to maximise the use of scarce spectrum resources and an idea which ATDI consultants modelled several years ago.

In the run-up to an auction of frequencies to operators of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks in a continental European country, ATDI was asked by the regulator there to look at the potential interference between the proposed new spectrum usage and existing television signals.

The challenge was even greater than in the UK as the population in this mountainous continental country is concentrated in a few cities with precipitous terrain between them. In addition, the regulator there stipulated that the wholesale exclusion of the rural population from either the LTE or television services would not be acceptable.

ATDI planned and modelled the interference issues and suggested to the regulator a number of ways of mitigating problems.

“As always, it’s an issue of finding the most cost-effective way of making best use of the frequencies available,” says ATDI managing director Cyprien de Cosson. “Regulators are under constant pressure to deliver efficiency in all areas while every company is founded on the principle of getting the most for least outlay.”

Among ATDI’s menu of mitigation options presented to the regulator was filtering of the type now being proposed for the UK. “Our precision planning and modelling identifies where problems might be and our consultancy delivers means of avoiding them,” Cyprien comments.

View our case study: Can LTE co-exist with other technologies
http://www.atdi.co.uk/telecom-library/case-studies/