TV White Spaces exploitation utilizing a Cognitive Radio system based on DVB-H

The transition from analogue to digital terrestrial television (i.e. Digital Switchover - DSO) releases a significant amount of valuable spectrum (i.e. Digital Dividend), in UHF band. Digital Dividend will be available in the form of a “cleared spectrum” of contiguous channels, as well as in the form of “interleaved spectrum”, namely TV White Spaces (i.e. TVWS), unused within given geographical locations, in order to avoid causing interference to co-channel or adjacent channel DVB-T transmitters. “Cleared spectrum” and TVWS provide an opportunity to deploy Cognitive Radio (CR) networks, able to operate in UHF band, by sharing the available spectrum with other licensed systems. In this context, this paper elaborates on the efficient sharing of TVWS by proposing a mobile TV network with CR capabilities, based on DVB-H. The proposed network operates as an unlicensed secondary system, accessing TVWS via a spectrum broker, which is in charge of assigning the available spectrum.