Measurements and Analysis of Secondary User Device Effects on Digital Television Receivers

This is the published version. Copyright © 2009 Newman et al.This article presents results from a study of the potential effects of secondary users operating in unoccupied television spectrum. Television spectrum is known within the wireless communications community as being underutilized, making it a prime candidate for dynamic spectrum access. The proposed use of this open spectrum has prompted questions concerning the quantity of available channel space that could be used without negative impact on consumers who view digital television broadcasts and the viability of secondary use of open channels immediately adjacent to a digital television broadcast channel. In this work, we investigate secondary device operation in the channels directly adjacent to a desired television channel, and the effects upon a selection of consumer digital television (DTV) receivers. Our observations strongly suggest that secondary users could operate "White Space Devices" (WSDs) in unoccupied channel bandwidth directly adjacent to a desired digital television (DTV) channel, with no observable adverse impact upon the reception of the desired channel content

Wireless distributed computing for cyclostationary feature detection

Recently, wireless distributed computing (WDC) concept has emerged promising manifolds improvements to current wireless technologies. Despite the various expected benefits of this concept, significant drawbacks were addressed in the open literature. One of WDC key challenges is the impact of wireless channel quality on the load of distributed computations. Therefore, this research investigates the wireless channel impact on WDC performance when the latter is applied to spectrum sensing in cognitive radio (CR) technology. However, a trade-off is found between accuracy and computational complexity in spectrum sensing approaches. Increasing these approaches accuracy is accompanied by an increase in computational complexity. This results in greater power consumption and processing time. A novel WDC scheme for cyclostationary feature detection spectrum sensing approach is proposed in this paper and thoroughly investigated. The benefits of the proposed scheme are firstly presented. Then, the impact of the wireless channel of the proposed scheme is addressed considering two scenarios. In the first scenario, workload matrices are distributed over the wireless channel. Then, a fusion center combines these matrices in order to make a decision. Meanwhile, in the second scenario, local decisions are made by CRs, then, only a binary flag is sent to the fusion center

Adaptive load balancing algorithm for wireless distributed computing networks

The concept of wireless distributed computing (WDC), proposed recently, is used to distribute and allocate computational tasks wirelessly. Despite various benefits of WDC, such as distributing the workload efficiently among cooperating nodes, WDC concept is facing enormous challenges. Proposing an efficient task allocation algorithm is one of the key challenges in WDC network. The work reported here proposes a novel task allocation algorithm called as adaptive load balancing (ALB). The ALB algorithm nominates the cooperating nodes in WDC network adaptively based on the channel conditions among the cooperating nodes. Then, it balances the workload amongst the cooperating nodes based on the available energy in each node. Herein, the validity of the proposed novel ALB algorithm is proved first. Then, ALB algorithm is applied to an application in cognitive radio network (CRN). Furthermore, the channel impact on the distributed tasks by ALB algorithm, in WDC-CRN, is investigated and benchmarked. Accordingly, the probability of detection results in case of applying the novel ALB algorithm is found to be enhanced

Measurements and Analysis of Secondary User Device Effects on Digital Television Receivers

This article presents results from a study of the potential effects of secondary users operating in unoccupied television spectrum. Television spectrum is known within the wireless communications community as being underutilized, making it a prime candidate for dynamic spectrum access. The proposed use of this open spectrum has prompted questions concerning the quantity of available channel space that could be used without negative impact on consumers who view digital television broadcasts and the viability of secondary use of open channels immediately adjacent to a digital television broadcast channel. In this work, we investigate secondary device operation in the channels directly adjacent to a desired television channel, and the effects upon a selection of consumer digital television (DTV) receivers. Our observations strongly suggest that secondary users could operate “White Space Devices” (WSDs) in unoccupied channel bandwidth directly adjacent to a desired digital television (DTV) channel, with no observable adverse impact upon the reception of the desired channel content

Submitted to DySPAN’07 Feasibility of Dynamic Spectrum Access in Underutilized Television Bands

Abstract — This paper presents the preliminary results from a feasibility study regarding the operation of secondary spectrum users within unused television spectrum. Television spectrum is known within the wireless communications community as being underutilized, making it a prime candidate for dynamic spectrum access. Nevertheless, the quality of this spectrum for enabling secondary transmissions has never been assessed. Two unique scenarios are examined:(i) the possibility of unlicensed devices interfering with digital TV reception, and (ii) the possibility of secondary users experiencing interference when operating within close proximity to television towers. With respect to the former, we investigate the critical operating parameters for developing the technical rules for device operation in bands adjacent to a digital television transmission. Regarding the latter, we examine, via measurement campaign, how non-ideal transmission properties of television broadcasts, including intermodulation and saturation effects, can potentially impair the performance of secondary transmissions. Index Terms—Digital TV, spectrum measurements, spectrum white space I