TV White Spaces Technical rules for Africa to enable efficient Spectrum Management

Date
2014-11Author
Pinifolo, Jonathan
Rimer, Suvendi
Paul, Babu
Mikeka, Chomora
Mlatho, Justice
Metadata
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Broadband Internet access has proved to be a key vital element of modern life and a crucial enabling factor for the global, information-age economy. TV White Spaces is one of the promising solutions for extending broadband connectivity to underserved areas employing UHF/VHF TV channels to allow the transmission of internet traffic over long distances using wireless communication. Regulators around the world are currently formulating rules and regulations that will facilitate deployment and access of TV White Spaces network. Radio Spectrum which is a finite resource is expected to accommodate voice and data traffic which is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Globally, traffic on mobile broadband networks has tremendously increased in the sense that current levels already exceed predictions made in 2010 for 2020. The statistics are in accordance to Huawei in China which is a global information and communications technology provider. As a result of the exploding popularity of many components being wireless in nature, the radio spectrum has become a scarce commodity in many countries and opening up of such UHF/VHF TV channels will definitely lead to increase in spectrum efficiency. Recent FCC rules permitting unlicensed use on a secondary basis of the TVWS promise a whole new set of possible applications. In an effort to ensure that these applications have been implemented, there is a need for creation and adoption of industry standards. FCC adopts a minimum distance between secondary user and TV service area to guarantee that the interference margin is not exceeded by secondary users. The transmission power for fixed secondary users is fixed to 4W which is a conservative setting. The principal objective of this paper is to present TV White Spaces Technical rules that are suitable for TVWS at Africa level to enable efficient spectrum Management.