UHF white space in Europe — A quantitative study into the potential of the 470–790 MHz band

In this paper we study the availability of TV white spaces in Europe. We focus specifically on the 470–790 MHz UHF band that is still predominantly used for TV broadcasting also after the digital dividend (frequency reallocation as part of transition to digital TV), which has taken place or is ongoing in several European countries. We find that in the countries used in our studies, approximately 56% of the TV channels are unused, when averaged over the whole geographic area. Considering the average over population instead of geographic area reduced the mean available white space to 49% of the channels. Our results confirm quantitatively the often stated expectation that there are indeed fewer white spaces available in Europe compared to, for example, the United States. We also study the influence of different modeling assumptions on our results, especially focusing on the impact of the choice of propagation model. Our results show that changing from statistical ITU-R model to the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model does not cause a major change in the overall estimated availability of white spaces. However, changing the propagation model can significantly affect especially the local variability of the estimated availability of spectrum. This underlines the importance of using right system models in various studies before making too far-reaching conclusions.