Airlines and other operators have been using rad alts in safety-critical and supplemental applications for decades without having to worry about data corruption from cell phone towers. Conversely, the telecommunications industry has paid billions of dollars to acquire the rights to transmit on the assigned frequencies. In this article, we’ll discuss use of the radio-frequency spectrum. What is “spectrum?” Spectrum is nothing more than the radio frequencies that run from low Hertz (Hz) to hundreds of gigahertz (GHz). The 5G transmissions are in the lower GHz (C band) range.
As a refresher, there are radio altimeters that use a frequency modulation technique to measure distance, and radar altimeters that essentially use pulsed radar. These terms are often conflated, even by manufacturers, so we’ll just call them “rad alt.”
