TV White Space in Europe

In this paper we study the availability of TV white spaces in Europe. Specifically, we focus on the 470–790 MHz UHF band, which will predominantly remain in use for TV broadcasting after the analog-to-digital switchover and the assignment of the 800 MHz band to licensed services have been completed. The expected number of unused, available TV channels in any location of the eleven countries we studied is 56% when we adopt the statistical channel model of the ITU-R. Similarly, a person residing in these countries can expect to enjoy 49% unused TV channels. If, in addition, restrictions apply to the use of adjacent TV channels, these numbers reduce to 25% and 18%, respectively. These figures are significantly smaller than those recently reported for the United States. We also study how these results change when we use the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model instead. We show that while the overall expected availability of white spaces is essentially the same, the local variability ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2012
• Where: TMC
• Authors: Jaap van de Beek, Janne Riihijärvi, Andreas Achtzehn, Petri Mähönen
• Keywords: Analog To Digital, Digital Switchover, Irregular Terrain Model, Logical Reasoning, TMC 2012