Implementation of Filter Bank–Based RF Transceiver for TV White Space

Abstract

This paper presents a general-purpose design scheme of a filter bank (FB)–based radio frequency (RF) transceiver that operates across the entire ultra-high frequency (UHF) TV band from 470 MHz to 698 MHz and complies with the TV white space (TVWS) regulatory requirements. To this end, an intermediate frequency (IF) band-pass filter (BPF) with a sharp skirt characteristic is considered as a solution for handling the incoming signals from a baseband modem. Specifically, an FB-based BPF structure with four ceramic resonator filters that effectively rejects unwanted signals is proposed to extract a desired signal in the TV band. Achievable data rates of a cognitive radio system (CRS) employing the proposed FB-based RF transceiver at the application layer are investigated in both wired and wireless environments. The service coverage of the CRS network is measured according to several modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) of the CRS. The results show that the coverage of a wireless network in a nearly open area can be extended by more than 9.3 km in the TVWS. Experimental results also confirm that the proposed FB-based RF transceiver is adequate for utilization in TVWS applications.