GE Healthcare (GEHC) disagreed strongly with Broadcom arguments...

GE Healthcare (GEHC) disagreed strongly with Broadcom arguments that unlicensed devices can safely share TV Channel 37 with wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) devices without posing interference issues. Broadcom made its case in a January filing (http://bit.ly/1kHsKtz). “While medical telemetry services deserve to be protected from interference, giving undue weight to claims that are not fully substantiated could undermine the Commission’s goals in this proceeding,” Broadcom said. It disagreed with a number of GEHC’s technical claims, submitted an alternative technical analysis and suggested that unlicensed technologies can operate co-channel with, and in close spectral proximity to, Channel 37 WMTS devices without causing harmful interference, GEHC responded (http://bit.ly/1ncQFmt). “Broadcom’s analysis includes flawed assumptions about a number of key points and, as a result, should be discounted by the Commission in resolving the issues pertaining to Channel 37 in this proceeding.” Among the issues debated are GEHC’s assumptions about free-space propagation, which Broadcom said are “overly conservative in this context in light of attenuation that will necessarily occur in urban environments.” GEHC countered that argument. “The possibility of free space propagation occurring between an uncoordinated portable device and hospital receiver is undeniable,” GEHC said. “Although higher attenuation in cluttered environments may occur, it is by no means guaranteed-especially at the shorter separation distances that Broadcom suggests. In fact, with potentially millions of unlicensed devices operating, free space propagation can be expected to be a very common occurrence."