1. Can it become a solution for spectrum crunch?
2. Will it have any role in 5G technologies?
3. Is this really an unlicensed spectrum i.e., will be available for low cost?
2. Can it become an alternative to any other spectral bands in use, say cellular, wi-fi, bluetooth and so on..?
Developing e-Health Capabilities in Bhutan, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267237935_Developing_e-Health_Capabilities_in_Bhutan, explains how Television White Space was leveraged in Bhutan in 2013 to address rural connectivity deficits in a cost-efficient way.
Great questions.
1. I don't think TV white spaces will solve the spectrum crunch, mostly because, there isn't enough spectrum there. It will help, but not a whole lot. Look at the numbers. The bandwidth of a single channel, in aggregated 4G and 5G channels, can be really wide. Like, 160 MHz wide, to provide the cell capacities these services are advertizing. Well, that's a huge fraction of all the spectrum allocated to TV. In the US, for instance, there is only about 200 MHz left for all terrestrial TV service.
2. If you look at the innovative RF techniques being discussed for 5G, such as massive MIMO, very wide channels, very small cells to promote lots of spectrum reuse, millimeter waves, and beam forming, none of these are compatible with the TV frequencies. Already, much of the 600 MHz band on up through the 800 MHz band, has been taken away from TV and reused for cellular service. The lower you go in spectrum, the less ideal it becomes for small cells, because these frequencies propagate too well.
3. The TV white spaces should be for unlicensed use.
4. You need to look at channel widths, to see what makes sense. WiFi and cellular use 20 MHz channels, but they have to aggregate several of these 20 MHz channels, to get the very high bit rates they are advertising. A single TV channel is 6 to 8 MHz only. So this should give an idea of how much help this will be.
There is a very good reason why 5G is looking at frequencies up in the multiple GHz at least, and even multiple 10s of GHz, and not low frequencies such as those in the TV bands. You need to much higher frequencies to achieve wide enough RF channels. I don't put a lot of weight on this TV white space idea, unless for low bit rate services.
Dear Shatche,
Adding to what said by the respected colleagues you can refer to our paper about the tv white space by following the link:
A Modified TV Tuner for Spectrum Sensing in TV UHF Bands
The main result of this study is that there is appreciable white space that can be utilized by using cognitive radios for secondary users.
Best wishes
TV wshite space can be used as part of 5G for reliable and low data-rate connection when the distance between macro evolved node B (eNB) and user equipment (UE) is higher. There is no doubt 5G shall use higher frequency bands hence higher absolute bandwidth per user. This shall be helpful to support bandwidth intensive applications and route higher volumes of traffic generated by low-rate internet of things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication.
Because of the arrival of 5G, do you think TV White Space technology is dead? Or will it have application in any specific domains?
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