TV white spaces exploitation through a bicameral geo-location database

  • Authors:

  • Joseph W. Mwangoka;Paulo Marques;Jonathan Rodriguez

  • Affiliations:

  • Instituto de Telecomunicaçíes, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal;Instituto de Telecomunicaçíes, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal;Instituto de Telecomunicaçíes, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal

  • Venue:
  • Telecommunications Policy
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

The exploitation of TV white spaces can meet the increasing demand for spectrum resources and create opportunities for deploying a variety of wireless services in a flexible manner. However, uncertainties from technologies, business models and regulatory policies hinder the take-off of TV white spaces exploitation. This paper proposes a bicameral (or two-chambered) geo-location database, which allows/supports both free and paid access to the TV white spaces: i.e., one chamber supports free access through opportunistic or geo-location database access; and the other chamber supports paid usage through secondary spectrum trading. Consequently, four technological scenarios for the acquisition of TV white spaces emerge, namely: sensing only, joint sensing and geo-location database access, geo-location database access only, and broker based secondary spectrum trading. An analysis of these scenarios is performed based on a theoretical framework for emerging technology evaluation while considering technological, business models and regulatory dimensions. The analyses show that free and paid access to TV white space complement each other; and that despite considerable infrastructure costs, the bicameral geo-location database is positioned to create viable TV white spaces exploitation value chains; hence have the most optimal technological, business and regulatory prospects.