A survey of cognitive radio and TV white spaces in Malaysia

Abstract

Cognitive radio (CR) enables spectrum sharing by allowing new unlicensed services from secondary users to operate in pre-allocated bands in an opportunistic manner. TV white space (TVWS) is a portion of the spectrum in ultra-high frequency (UHF) and very-high frequency bands, which is not utilised by primary users in specific time and location. It is envisaged that more spectrum will be available after digital switchover (DSO) TV transmission replaces the current analogue system. Recently, the regulators in the USA and in the UK have given approval for companies to operate new communication systems with the capability of utilising TVWS spectrum. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the CR technology and quantifies the TVWS status in Malaysia to expose the spectrum reuse opportunities for future secondary user deployment. Taking the 18 major cities in Malaysia into consideration, we find that all seven TV stations utilise from two to seven of the UHF channels. In our analysis, three usage scenarios were considered, where the utilisation of the 40 UHF channels is full, half and a third. For each case, it was discovered that TVWS was 82.5%, 65% and 46.1%, which can be opportunistically utilised by CR users.