Temporal Variation of Duty Cycle in the GSM Bands

In a quest to efficiently manage the scarce spectrum, researchers, governments and regulatory bodies have been conducting spectrum occupancy measurements in various countries across the world. This paper describes the results and analysis derived from a long-term spectrum occupancy measurement conducted in GSM bands at a fixed location in the Faculty of Communication and Information sciences, University of Ilorin, Nigeria. The measurements data were collected for 4 weeks continuously for a period of 24 hours. The data gathered were used to determine the temporal variation of duty cycle in all the bands. The GSM 900 and GSM 1800 have average spectrum occupancy of 10%, and 9% respectively. The results showed some form of temporal variation due to variable activity in days and nights, weekdays and weekends. This is an effort to develop spectrum usage repository for big data analytic studies. This would help researchers and policy makers to understand the activities going on in the spectrum bands so that they can device intelligent spectrum models for effective utilization.