Optimal quantization of TV white space regions for a broadcast based geolocation database

Abstract

Currently, TV white space databases communicate the available channels over a reliable Internet connection to the secondary devices. For places where an Internet connection is not available, such as in developing countries, we propose a broadcast based geolocation database. This proposed geolocation database will broadcast the TV white space (or the primary services protection regions) on a rate-constrained channel. In this work, the feasibility of a broadcast based geolocation database transmission will be examined over rate constrained satellite channels. To address this problem, the quantization or digital representation of primary services protection regions is considered. Due to the quantization process, any point in the protection region must not be declared as white space region. Thus, this quantization problem is different than traditional quantizers which minimize the mean-squared error. A quantizer design algorithm is the main result of this work, which minimizes the TV white space area declared as protected region due to quantization. Performance results of our quantization algorithm on US and India UHF-band protection regions will be shown. The update-rate versus bandwidth tradeoff, while using satellite TV channels, for the proposed broadcast based geolocation database will also be explored in this work.