TV white space in Nigeria in UHF band: Geo-spatial approach

Abstract

This research is focused on evaluating the amount of television white space (TVWS) in the UHF band in Nigeria. The work takes a new perspective called the Geo-spatial approach in quantifying the available TVWS. Spectrum sharing model was developed from the protection viewpoint where the secondary users (SUs) are only allowed to reuse the spectrum outside the keep-out distance from the broadcast transmission grade B contour of the primary users. The spatial data used include the administrative map of Nigeria showing the states' boundary delineation and parameters for all the TV transmitters, including their coordinates. The broadcast range of transmission and protection contour of each UHF transmitter in Nigeria was obtained using the developed models. To show the broadcast range, the transmitter position, represented by a point, was subjected to GIS Buffering operation using the Analysis Tools extension within the ArcGIS ArcToolbox. Results obtained show that the proposed method recovers more white spaces when compared with the traditional command-and-control spectrum model. The work also provides the channel occupancy distribution of Nigeria, United Kingdom and the USA for the purpose of comparison.