Requirements and declarations Ken Hunt EBU Technical department.

Requirements and declarations

Ken Hunt EBU Technical department

Overview

➲ It is well known that in some parts of the planning area there are too many requirements to be satisfied

➲ It is also well known that administrative declarations can be used to overcome some deficiencies of the computing process:

● to account for the presence of mountains● to account for future use of directional

transmitting antennas● other effects...

Overview

➲ It may not be obvious that a combination of excess requirements and abusive (internal) declarations can have a disastrous impact on the planning process

➲ It is the declarations which are internal to any one administration which have the highest potential for abuse

➲ A separate presentation goes into the detail of this

➲ This presentation deals with some specific examples and some possible improvements

Example 1

➲ Some of the abuse of the concept of declarations seems to be accidental

➲ An example is where an administration submits several requirements for a given area, some with a single channel and others with 'UHF' (or 'VHF')

➲ The same administration then declares that most, or all, of the multi channel requirements are compatible

Example 1

➲ They could all then be assigned the same channel, possibly even for the same area

➲ While this would 'satisfy' many of the requirements, it would not lead to a situation which could be implemented

➲ It is unlikely to be what the administration intended but is a direct result of what it has said that it wants

Example 2

➲ Another example is where an administration has submitted several requirements for the same area with the same single channel

➲ These are clearly incompatible but the administration has declared them compatible

➲ It is likely that the synthesis process will find that it can assign the same channel to more than one requirement for the same area

➲ It is unlikely that this is what the administration wanted (but it is possible)

Example 3

➲ In some cases an administration has submitted many tens of requirements, sometimes over 100, for the same area

➲ Without declarations there are clearly too many to be satisfied

➲ With declarations many of the requirements may be 'satisfied' but most of them could never be implemented

Example 4

➲ In some other cases it is difficult to believe that a mistake has been made and it seems more likely that there has been a deliberate attempt to distort the planning process and gain an advantage over neighbouring countries

➲ For example there are sometimes several overlapping allotments/assignments on the same channel

➲ These are clearly incompatible but have been declared compatible

Example 4

➲ The synthesis process will count these requirements individually and may then give an advantage to the concerned administration

➲ It will be argued that there are always mountains between the requirements

Example 4

➲ The synthesis process will count these requirements individually and may then give an advantage to the concerned administration

➲ It will be argued that there are always mountains between the requirements

➲ In some parts of the planning area there seem to be more mountains than people!

Conditional declarations

➲ A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed

Conditional declarations

➲ A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed

➲ YET

Conditional declarations

➲ A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed

➲ YET

➲ It is quite easy to foresee some abuse➲ This could be where the conditions are not

sufficiently precise and it subsequently is found to be impossible to meet them and a requirement can then not be implemented

Possible improvements

➲ Action by administrations:

➲ Every effort should be made to ensure that the conditions applied to 'conditional declarations' :

● are stated explicitly and without ambiguity● are not subject to subsequent increased

difficulty (such as increased protection ratios)

➲ Action within the planning approach :➲ None discussed

Excess requirements

➲ Action by administrations:

➲ Every effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess

Excess requirements

➲ Action by administrations:

➲ Every effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess

➲ Additional effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess

➲ However, there are currently increases

Excess requirements

➲ Action within the planning approach:

➲ Difficult to see what could be done in the absence of any identification of what are the priorities of a given administration

➲ Can administrations apply moral pressure to their neighbours?

Declaration abuse

➲ Action by administrations:

➲ Apply moral pressure to neighbours

Declaration abuse

➲ Action by administrations:

➲ Apply moral pressure to neighbours

➲ Apply more moral pressure to neighbours!

Declaration abuse

➲ Action within the planning approach:

➲ An extension to the compatibility analysis and synthesis could be considered in order to reduce the imbalance that they currently introduce

➲ This could involve splitting the synthesis into two phases

➲

Declaration abuse

➲ In the first phase internal declarations would be either:

● ignored completely, or● used to produce 'super linked' sets of

requirements which would be treated as single requirements by the synthesis

➲ In the second phase any requirements which were assigned a channel in the first phase would retain a channel and all declarations (internal and external) would be taken into account

Declaration abuse

➲ The overall impact would be to achieve a better balance between administrations which had made abusive declarations and those which had not

➲ In those parts of the planning area where there had been no abusive declarations there should be little or no effect