Development and Field Experiment of White-Spaces LTE Communication System in UK Digital Terrestrial TV Band

Utilization of the TV white-spaces (TVWS), which are spatially or temporally unused frequency in TV bands, is promising technology to alleviate spectrum resource shortage. Services using the TVWS have been already started in the U.S.A., and the TVWS pilot program has been performed and test operation of qualified white-spaces database (WSDB) has been started by the Ofcom in the U.K. Authors have developed TVWS LTE (Long Term Evolution) system with white-space devices (WSDs) licensed by the Ofcom and WSDB qualified by also the Ofcom, and participated in the pilot program performed in the U.K. In this paper, developed TVWS LTE system is summarized and field experiment of throughput measurement is performed in the London urban area is described. As a result of the field experiment, maximum downlink throughput of 45.4 Mbps in the FDD mode and 19.5 Mbps in the TDD mode were obtained under the condition of SISO with a signal bandwidth of 20 MHz. This is the first report on the field experiment of the TVWS LTE system aiming for practical use.