Considering the ever-increasing demand and the associated high costs of wireless electromagnetic spectrum, technologies that can facilitate efficient spectrum utilization are of utmost importance. Cognitive radio (CR), in conjunction with TV White Spaces (TVWS), can be a viable solution, where unlicensed or secondary users can opportunistically use the not-currently-in-use, aka idle, TV channels registered to licensed or primary users. This thesis focuses on the design and development of a testbed prototype for real-time testing of secondary user transmission in TVWS. Once an unused TV channel has been identified, our system uses that idle channel for transmitting and receiving signals. The testbed is built on Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) device powered by GNU Radio Software, Software Defined Radio (SDR) receptor, and Spectrum Analyser. The developed prototype splits a given TVWS channel into multiple small sub-channels and performs channel characterization through end-to-end transmission and reception of information carrying signals. The channel characteristics are presented through Bit Transfer Rate (BTR) and frequency spectrum results. The prototype also facilitates provisions for applying error correction coding as a mean of undertaking comparative performance testing
