Interference Analysis Between Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and 4G LTE Mobile Networks in the Digital Dividend Bands

With the introduction of digital terrestrial television (DTT) and the analogue television switch-off, terrestrial broadcast spectrum in the UHF band is being released for mobile communications, in particular for fourth generation (4G) long term evolution (LTE) mobile services. This spectrum is known as digital dividend. An impending problem when deploying 4G LTE mobile networks in the digital dividend bands is that interferences may appear in the adjacent radio frequency channels used for DTT. In this paper, we analyze the adjacent coexistence of DTT and 4G LTE networks in the digital dividend bands at 700 MHz and 800 MHz. A generic framework is adopted such that results can be easily extrapolated to different scenarios and bands. Results are presented as a function of the guard band between technologies, for both LTE uplink and downlink adjacent to the DTT signals, and for fixed outdoor and portable indoor DTT reception. Also, the effect of using anti-LTE filters is studied.This work was supported by the Spectrum Regulator of Colombia ANE (Agencia Nacional del Espectro).Ribadeneira Ramírez, JA.; Martínez, G.; Gómez Barquero, D.; Cardona, N. (2016). Interference Analysis Between Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and 4G LTE Mobile Networks in the Digital Dividend Bands. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(1):24-34. doi:10.1109/TBC.2015.2492465S243462

Coexistence of digital terrestrial television and next generation cellular networks in the 700 MHz band

"(c) 20xx IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works."With the spectrum liberation obtained by the deployment of digital terrestrial television and the analog TV switch-off, new bands are being assigned to IMT LTE. In the first cellular deployments in the digital dividend at the 800 MHz band, problems emerged due to the interference cellular networks can cause to DTT signals. Possible solutions imply either an inefficient use of the spectrum (increasing the guard band and reducing the number of DTT channels) or a high cost (using anti-LTE filters for DTT receivers). The new spectrum allocated to mobile communications is the 700 MHz band, also known as the second digital dividend. In this new IMT band, the LTE uplink is placed in the lower part of the band. Hence, the ITU-R invited several studies to be performed and reported the results to WRC-15. In this article, we analyze the coexistence problem in the 700 MHz band and evaluate the interference of LTE signals to DTT services. Several coexistence scenarios have been considered, and laboratory tests have been performed to measure interference protection ratios.Fuentes, M.; García Pardo, C.; Garro Crevillen, E.; Gómez Barquero, D.; Cardona Marcet, N. (2014). Coexistence of digital terrestrial television and next generation cellular networks in the 700 MHz band. IEEE Wireless Communications. 21(6):63-69. doi:10.1109/MWC.2014.7000973S636921

Analysis of coexistence and mutual interference between mobile and digital television systems

La creciente demanda de servicios de comunicaciones inalámbricas multimedia es un factor clave en los mercados más desarrollados. Así, las palabras de moda en las comunicaciones personales “acceso para cualquier persona, en cualquier sitio, en cualquier momento y para el servicio deseado”, implican una demanda notoria y creciente del Espectro Radioeléctrico. En este sentido, la última Conferencia Mundial de Radiocomunicaciones 2007 (CMR-07) atribuyó la parte alta de la banda UHF a las redes móviles como servicio co-primario a partir del 2015 en la Región 1, aprovechando el Dividendo Digital debido a la mayor eficiencia espectral de la TV digital con respecto a la analógica. Esto tiene el potencial de causar una interferencia perjudicial entre los sistemas de televisión y los sistemas móviles y necesita ser analizado con atención. En este artículo presentamos un estudio del problema de la interferencia co-canal en dicho escenario, proponiendo una metodología para tener en cuenta la interferencia entre una red móvil LTE y un sistema televisivo DVB-T, poniendo de relieve el comportamiento diferente de los dos radioenlaces.The ever increasing demand for multimedia wireless communication systems is a key feature of more advanced markets. The buzzwords of personal communications, meant to provide “access to anyone, anywhere, at anytime to the wanted service”, implies that radio spectrum demands are dramatically increasing in most developed markets. The last World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) allocated on a co-primary basis the upper part of the UHF band to mobile services as from 2015 in Region 1, taking advantage of the Digital Dividend due to the higher spectrum efficiency of digital TV with respect to the analogue system. This will cause potentially harmful mutual interference between TV and mobile radio services, that needs to be carefully analysed. In this paper we present a study of the co-channel interference problem, proposing a methodology to take into account the mutual interference between a LTE mobile network and a DVB-T system and highlighting the different behaviour of the two radio links

Spectrum Sharing for LTE-A and DTT: Field Trials of an Indoor LTE-A Femtocell in DVB-T2 Service Area

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.In this paper, we study a particular case which goes a step beyond the previous ones, as it aims at sharing the same frequency band in the same area between long term evolution-advance (LTE-A) and digital video broadcasting-terrestrial second generation (DVB-T2) technologies. Those geographical areas that are not covered because the useful DTT signal is obstructed by the environment or it has a limited coverage by the network design can be called micro-TVWS. We assume that a DVB-T2 transmitter provides coverage for fixed rooftop reception as a primary service, to a building in which a LTE-A femtocell is installed indoors for local coverage, as a secondary service. The results have been obtained by laboratory emulation and validated through field measurements using professional equipment. Our results provide the technical restrictions of the LTE-A femtocell, mainly on the maximum allowable effective isotropic radiated power that could transmit on the DTT band in terms of carrier separation, from co-channel to adjacent band. These results meet the need of spectrum for IMT-Advanced technologies, so spectrum sharing is proposed in this paper as a new solution to make an efficient use of this resource.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant "DEFINE5G" TEC2014-60258-C2-1-R and Grant "ARCO5G" TEC2014-56469-REDT, and in part by the European FEDER Funds.Martínez Pinzón, G.; Cardona Marcet, N.; García Pardo, C.; Fornés Leal, A.; Ribadeneira-Ramírez, JA. (2016). Spectrum Sharing for LTE-A and DTT: Field Trials of an Indoor LTE-A Femtocell in DVB-T2 Service Area. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(3):552-561. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2016.2582338S55256162

Design and Validation of a Software Defined Radio Testbed for DVB-T Transmission

This paper describes the design and validation of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) testbed, which can be used for Digital Television transmission using the Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial (DVB-T) standard. In order to generate a DVB-T-compliant signal with low computational complexity, we design an SDR architecture that uses the C/C++ language and exploits multithreading and vectorized instructions. Then, we transmit the generated DVB-T signal in real time, using a common PC equipped with multicore central processing units (CPUs) and a commercially available SDR modem board. The proposed SDR architecture has been validated using fixed TV sets, and portable receivers. Our results show that the proposed SDR architecture for DVB-T transmission is a low-cost low-complexity solution that, in the worst case, only requires less than 22% of CPU load and less than 170 MB of memory usage, on a 3.0 GHz Core i7 processor. In addition, using the same SDR modem board, we design an off-line software receiver that also performs time synchronization and carrier frequency offset estimation and compensation

Interference Analysis between Mobile Radio and Digital Terrestrial Television in the Digital Dividend Spectrum

This paper is concerned with the analysis of adjacent channel interference of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile system operating in the Digital Dividend into Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial (DVB–T) system. Field measurements in the real LTE network have been conducted in order to define the most significant scenarios and for each of these, Protection Ratios have been quantified. Variable load on the LTE base station has been taken into consideration. Therefore, Protection Ratios for the LTE base station in idle state, and fully dedicated mode have been calculated. Interference mitigation techniques have been reviewed, and an effective deployment method has been proposed

Frequency and Network Planning and Optimization of the Digital Terrestrial Television DVB-T2 Networks in Colombia

[EN] In December 2011, Colombia updated its national Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) standard from DVB-T to DVBT2, the second-generation European DTT standard. DVBT2 is the current state-of-the art DTT system in the world, and it brings very significant improvements in terms of capacity, robustness and flexibility compared with any other DTT technology. The iTEAM Research Institute was very involved in the promotion and adoption of DVB-T2 in Colombia. The case of Colombia is unique because it was the first country to deploy DVB-T2 with 6 MHz channelization, and because the digital networks will co-exist with the analogue NTSC network until the analogue switch-off and with digital ISDB-Tb and DVB-T networks in the neighbor countries. Furthermore, DVB-T2 networks will be deployed from scratch without any constraint imposed by existing DVB-T infrastructure. This paper provides an overview of the frequency and network DVB-T2 planning activities performed by the iTEAM Research Institute in cooperation with the Spectrum Regulator of Colombia.This work was partially supported by the Spectrum Regulator of Colombia ANE (Agencia Nacional del Espectro). The authors thank the Spanish companies Ingenia-Telecom and Axión Infraestructuras de Telecomunicación, partners in some of the projects developed for the ANE.Gómez Barquero, D.; López Sánchez, J.; Martinez Pinzon, G.; Ribadeneira Ramírez, JA.; Garro Crevillen, E.; García Pardo, C.; Fuentes Muela, M.... (2014). Frequency and Network Planning and Optimization of the Digital Terrestrial Television DVB-T2 Networks in Colombia. Waves. 6:35-49. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/56485S3549

Field Measurements in Determining Incumbent Spectrum Utilization and Protection Criteria in Wireless Co-existence Studies

Studies of spectrum sharing and co-existence between different wireless communication systems are important, as the current aim is to optimize their spectrum utilization and shift from static exclusive spectrum allocation to more dynamic co-existence of different systems within same frequency bands. The main goal of this thesis is to provide measurement methodologies for obtaining realistic results in modeling incumbent spectrum utilization and in determining incumbent protection criteria. The following research questions are considered in this thesis: Q1) How should field measurements be conducted and used to model incumbent spectrum utilization? Q2) How should field measurements be conducted and used to determine protection criteria for incumbents in a co-existence scenario with mobile broadband? and Q3) Which licensing methods and technological solutions are feasible to enable spectrum sharing in frequency bands with incumbents? To answer to Q1, this thesis describes the development of a spectrum observatory network concept created through international collaboration and presents measurement methodologies, which allow to obtain realistic spectrum occupancy data over geographical areas using interference map concept. A cautious approach should be taken in making strong conclusions from previous single fixed location spectrum occupancy studies, and measurements covering larger geographical areas might be needed if the measurement results are to be used in making spectrum management decisions. The field interference measurements considered in Q2 are not covered well in the current research literature. The measurements are expensive to conduct as they require substantial human resources, test network infrastructure, professional level measurement devices and radio licenses. However, field measurements are needed to study and verify hypotheses from computer simulations or theoretical analyses in realistic operating conditions, as field measurement conditions can not or are not practical to be adequately modeled in simulations. This thesis proposes measurement methodologies to obtain realistic results from field interference measurements, taking into account the propagation environments and external sources of interference. Less expensive simulations and laboratory measurements should be used both to aid in the planning of field measurements and to complement the results obtained from field measurements. Q3 is investigated through several field interference measurement campaigns to determine incumbent protection criteria and by analyzing the spectrum observatory data to determine the occupancy and trends in incumbent spectrum utilization. The field interference measurement campaigns have been conducted in real TV White Space, LTE Supplemental Downlink and Licensed Shared Access test network environments, and the obtained measurement results have been contributed to the development of the European spectrum regulation. In addition, field measurements have been conducted to contribute to the development and technical validation of the spectrum sharing frameworks. This thesis also presents an overview of the current status and possible directions in spectrum sharing. In conclusion, no single spectrum sharing method can provide universally optimal efficiency in spectrum utilization. Thus, an appropriate spectrum sharing framework should be chosen taking into account both the spectrum utilization of the current incumbents and the future needs in wireless communications.Siirretty Doriast

5G and beyond networks

This chapter investigates the Network Layer aspects that will characterize the merger of the cellular paradigm and the IoT architectures, in the context of the evolution towards 5G-and-beyond, including some promising emerging services as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Base Stations, and V2X communications