DEVELOPMENT OF A WEB BASED GEO-LOCATION DATA BASE FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF TELEVISION WHITE SPACE IN SOUTH EAST NIGERIA.
Keywords:
Television White Space, Geo-Location Database, White Space Devices, Sensing Techniques, Television Spectrum.Abstract
Broadband penetration into developing countries such as Nigeria is still very low especially in the rural areas because of the prohibitive costs of laying cable and fiber. The wireless broadband technology has been selected as a better alternative for solving the last mile problem because they are cheaper to implement. Television White Space(TVWS) technology is enjoying a lot of attention from the wireless technology research community because of the fantastic propagation characteristics of the Television spectrum such as wide coverage area and ability to penetrate harsh terrain making it suitable for providing broadband access to rural as well as sparsely populated areas. This work presents a developed web based Geo location data base designed to identify TVWS in a given location and at any given time of the day. The sensing technique was used to investigate the state of the TV spectrum to identify the frequencies that are occupied by licensed users and those frequencies that are vacant for a given region and time. A database was developed using results from the sensing. WSDs can query the database via the internet with the help of a PHP script that handles the logic used to analyze, identify and make predictions on TV white space once the Device has indicated its location and time. The results from the query guide the WSD on its choice of frequency to transmit over. This plays a crucial role in ensuring that the primary (licensed) users are protected from interference which is criteria for TVWS communication technology. Analysis of the results from query also illustrates the inefficiency in the current command-and-control static spectrum allocation to large area regime with over 70% of the TV spectrum left unused at any given time of the day. With the ongoing analogue to digital transition for television broadcast, even more frequencies will be left vacant for opportunistic access by secondary user (WSDs). Hence, the web based Geo location database developed in this paper brings researchers one step closer to solving the last mile problem in South-East Nigeria.
