Prototype of FDD/TDD dual mode LTE base station and terminal adaptor utilizing TV white-spaces

Recently, a spectrum resource shortage problem has been aggravated in a cellular system due to growth of service or application business based on high-speed and high-capacity communication. To solve this problem, data traffic offloading to “white-spaces” has been promoted worldwide. In particular, white-spaces in the TV band (TVWS, TV White-spaces) has attracted attentions for securing more channels to existing communication systems and rules for a secondary use of the TVWS have been established in the USA, the UK, Japan, etc. NICT has researched and developed TVWS communication systems that consist of a white-space database, a network manager and some prototyped TV band devices based on WLAN systems including the IEEE802.11af draft standard, however, TV band devices based on current cellular systems are also necessary for further investigation of cellular traffic offloading to the TVWS. In this study, TDD/FDD dual mode LTE base station and terminal adaptor utilizing TVWS are prototyped by applying the UHF converter technology and RF performance is characterized.