The usage of the UNII-3 band in Belgium & The Netherlands

Hi, and welcome to my first technical post of this blog.

In this first post, I will talk about the use of the UNII-3 band (5725MHz - 5850MHz, channels 149, 153, 157, 161, 165) in Belgium and The Netherlands.

Since I began to gather WIFI knowledge, across most literature, I could read that the UNII-3 band is not allowed to be used in Europe. Is the documentation out of date, or did I read the wrong literature, I don't know... But I had to change my view on this after sorting it all out.

Using the band

I was having a discussion with one of our vendors on this. On certain AP's I could see the UNII-3 band being used. As the vendor of the AP's was certain they did nothing wrong, I started gathering more information on this subject.
After looking up and doublechecking everything, it soon became clear that the UNII-3 band is allowed to be used, both in Belgium and Holland, with a max. EIRP of 25mW. Also important is: this band is not part of the DFS channels.


The steps taken to check this can be found at the end of this article.

Image taken from the "WLAN Pros" notebook.

Challenges

There is also a backside to the use of the UNII-3 band. If we look at the way site surveys were performed without the use of the UNII-3 band, we can mostly see the UNII-1 band will be used, as this is non-DFS and the lowest power (except for the UNII-3 band).
Where UNII-1 will have max. EIRP of 200mW, the UNII-3 band will be about 9dB lower with ' 25mW EIRP. This can possibly create issues with coverage when you suddenly choose to go and implement the UNII-3 channels into your environment as the design is probably done with 9dB more power.

Another challenge is the client itself. When using the UNII-3 band, you have to make sure that your clients also support these channels. When older devices are used, it is advised to check if these clients can use the UNII-3 band because this can cause big coverage holes if not supported.

Make sure the AP supports these channels. Untill now, I have checked with three vendors and not all of them support the UNII-3 band. The brands below were checked on the date this article is published, so make sure you have updated information on this as this may possibly change.

• Aerohive: supports UNII-3 by default when selecting Belgium as country. For now this can only be disabled per AP. However they are working to change it so you can disable it for all devices at once.
• Ruckus: at the time being, the UNII-3 channels are not an option in the configuration when choosing Belgium as country.

Advantages

For high density, if implemented with care, the UNII-3 band will provide us with 5 more channels in the non-DFS part of the 5GHz. Within a high density deployment: stadion, event hall, etc.., the support of the UNII-3 band on the client is less important if the channel plan makes sure that all secondary coverage is available in non-UNII-3 channels. This should not be an issue in a high density setup. Another use case here would be when using dual 5GHz AP's where you put one of the radio's on the UNII-3 band.

In environments with a lot of radar, where the UNII-2 band cannot be used, the use of the UNII-3 band can help you with the channel re-use on the 5GHz, as the band is not part of the DFS channels. For example, warehouses at the airport.


Thank you for reading my post and I hope you learned something useful here.

Best regards,
Dries Velle

Belgium

The Belgian regulator is the BIPT. When I went looking on their website, you can find the whole frequency range with everything that is allowed on what frequency. If you go there to the 5650-5830 MHz section, you can find that following is allowed: " Non-specific Short Range Devices (5725-5875 MHz)" The reference for the Non-specific Short Range Devices was the ETSi: EN 300 440 standard.
Within the ETSI standard, you can find it is not part of the DFS channels and has an EIRP of max. 25mW.

To be sure that all of the above was correct, I doublechecked this with someone of the BIPT who confirmed this over email.

The Netherlands

The regulator in The Netherlands is the 'Agentschap Telecom'. They also have a list of free to use frequencies. If you go to 'Artikel 6, Bijlage 11, nr. J', you can find that  2725 - 57875 MHz can be used with a max. EIRP of 25mW.

Just as with my research on the Belgian law, I emailed the regulator to be sure my findings were correct. Also in this case I received the confirmation through email.