A Wireless Back-Haul Architecture Supporting Dynamic Broadcast and White Space Coexistence

Today's wireless operators must support the triple-play service offerings demanded by the market or by regulatory bodies through so-called Universal Service Obligations (USOs). Typically, those services are offered within the scarce and precious wireless spectrum resources owned by the providers. In parallel, broadcasters provide live TV and radio programming via their own radio spectrum. The paradigm shift from live TV to time-shifted consumption blurs the previously clear separation between broadcasting services and multi-media content received via regular, wired or wireless, data networks. The expected reduction of live content through decomposition and clever rescheduling may result in temporarily vacated resources in the TV spectrum which could then be used for regular wireless data services. In this paper we argue that such a 'Dynamic Broadcast' scheme can be supported - at layer 2.5 - by our Wireless Back-Haul (WiBACK) architecture, focusing on the architecture and protocol requirements to integrate Unidirectional Technologies (UDTs) such as DVB-T2 or ATSC. Initial validation results show that our WiBACK architecture can support a 'Dynamic Broadcast' system and provides the mechanisms to orchestrate such coordinated white space usage while providing a common MPLS-based transport.

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