A database assisted quality of service and pricing based spectrum allocation framework for TV white spaces

Abstract

Analog to digital switchover of TV transmission has freed up a large amount of licensed spectrum. This spectrum is in the form of chunks, referred as TV White Spaces (TVWS). It is made compulsory by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for unlicensed users to access TVWS through Access Points (APs), who have to query a FCC approved database e.g., WhiteNet, periodically to avail the free spectrum. It is important that for efficient utilization of available spectrum, APs must assign spectrum to end users based on their Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Moreover, care must be taken in charging end users while meeting their QoS requirements, as different end users demand different pricing schemes i.e., fixed pricing and variable pricing. Considering these challenges, a pre-existing database architecture (WhiteNet) has been modified in this paper by adding new features in it. It is proposed to characterize end users’ QoS requirements in the form of demand indices and provide admission control on the basis of pricing schemes. It is proved with our experimental results that our proposed scheme is a useful addition in FCC’s TVWS database framework