Measurements and analysis of spectrum occupancy with several bandwidths

Opportunistic use of the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band has recently received a growing interest. Numerous measurement campaigns have been conducted to analyze the spectrum use in the ISM band in several locations. However, the parameter setting in measurements regarding the bandwidth and time resolution has not been analyzed in detail to support opportunistic use in the band. In this paper, measurement analysis with several bandwidths in two different locations is conducted. The study shows that the bandwidth strongly affects the results. However, there is clearly room for opportunistic operation in all the cases. The results also show that the idle times in the ISM band are geometrically distributed when the time resolution of the analysis is 1 second.