GE Asks FCC to Protect Telemetry

HDM Breaking News, May 7, 2008

GE Healthcare is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to provide more protection to medical telemetry systems as channels on the wireless spectrum are opened to more types of devices.

Medical telemetry systems run on Channel 37. In a letter sent May 6 to FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch, Waukesha, Wis.-based GE Healthcare recommends devices using Channels 36 and 38 be restricted to professionally installed “fixed access” devices. “Such a restriction would serve to protect medical telemetry from harmful interference caused by adjacent channel overloading, and would also serve to reduce the likelihood of co-channel interference due to white space device out-of-band spurious emissions falling into Channel 37,” according to the letter.

If the FCC decides not to impose the restriction, GE recommends an “emissions mask,” which sets maximum signal strengths for portable devices operating in certain frequencies on Channels 36-38. The mask would address adjacent channel overload as well as Channel 37 spurious emission interference, according to the letter.

For a copy of GE Healthcare’s letter to the FCC, send an e-mail to joseph.goedert@sourcemedia.com.

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