Cognitive Radio Access to TV White Spaces: Spectrum Opportunities, Commercial Applications and Remaining Technology Challenges

Cognitive radio is being intensively researched as the enabling technology for secondary access to the so-called TV White Spaces (TVWS), large portions of spectrum in theUHF/VHF bands which become available on a geographical basis after digital switchover. Both in the US, and more recently, in the UK the regulators have given conditional endorsement to this new mode of access. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in technology, regulation and standardization of cognitive access to TVWS. It examines the spectrum opportunity and commercial use cases associated with this form of secondary access.

[1]  M. Nekovee Dynamic spectrum access — concepts and future architectures , 2006 .

[2]  A. Ghasemi,et al.  Collaborative spectrum sensing for opportunistic access in fading environments , 2005, First IEEE International Symposium on New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks, 2005. DySPAN 2005..

[3]  Sai Shankar Nandagopalan,et al.  Analysis of Aggregated Interference at DTV Receivers in TV Bands , 2008, 2008 3rd International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CrownCom 2008).

[4]  Mohinder Jankiraman,et al.  Space-Time Codes and Mimo Systems , 2004 .

[5]  J. Bradford,et al.  Optimising usage of spectrum below 15GHz used for defence in the UK , 2008 .

[6]  Dave Cavalcanti,et al.  Chapter 14 – Cognitive radio for broadband wireless access in TV bands: The IEEE 802.22 standards , 2010 .

[7]  Wonjong Rhee,et al.  Performance comparison of OFDM and multitone with polyphase filter bank for wireless communications , 1998, VTC '98. 48th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference. Pathway to Global Wireless Revolution (Cat. No.98CH36151).

[8]  Patrick Mitran,et al.  Limits on communications in a cognitive radio channel , 2006, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[9]  D. A. Chaturvedi Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio , 2008 .

[10]  Maziar Nekovee,et al.  Quantifying the Availability of TV White Spaces for Cognitive Radio Operation in the UK , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops.

[11]  Hüseyin Arslan,et al.  A survey of spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio applications , 2009, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[12]  A. Sahai,et al.  How much white space is there ? , 2009 .

[13]  Monisha Ghosh,et al.  Spectrum Sensing Prototype for Sensing ATSC and Wireless Microphone Signals , 2008, 2008 3rd International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CrownCom 2008).

[14]  S. Kawade,et al.  Can Cognitive Radio Access to TV White Spaces Support Future Home Networks? , 2010, 2010 IEEE Symposium on New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum (DySPAN).

[15]  Joseph Mitola,et al.  Cognitive radio: making software radios more personal , 1999, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[16]  D. Sicker,et al.  Can Cognitive Radio Support Broadband Wireless Access? , 2007, 2007 2nd IEEE International Symposium on New Frontiers in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks.

[17]  S. M. Mishra,et al.  Spectrum Sensing : Fundamental Limits , 2009 .

[18]  Alexander M. Wyglinski,et al.  An Efficient Implementation of NC-OFDM Transceivers for Cognitive Radios , 2006, 2006 1st International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications.