Wi-Fi, but not on Steroids: Performance analysis of a Wi-Fi-like Network operating in TVWS under realistic conditions

The recent decisions by regulators in the USA and UK to open up unused portions of UHF spectrum for secondary use have been met with keen interest in using these TV white spaces (TVWS) for providing broadband services through Wi-Fi-like connectivity. Amid the ensuing media hype about “Wi-Fi on steroids”, there is a widespread perception that Wi-Fi operating in TVWS will provide much longer range, superior speeds, and more reliable connections than traditional Wi-Fi at 2.4 GHz. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis of the performance of a network of Wi-Fi-like access points (APs) operating in TVWS in order to obtain a realistic estimate of the achievable range and downlink rate of such a secondary system. Unlike previous studies, we explicitly consider the effects of inter-AP interference and congestion and use real TVWS channel availability estimates from an example region of Germany. We confirm the favourable properties of the lower TVWS frequency range, of enabling better propagation through walls and a larger coverage range for the same power budget. Our results show that operating Wi-Fi hotspots in TVWS might be technologically attractive for outdoor rural areas where user demand is low. However, the extended coverage range in TVWS leads to increased congestion which rapidly limits the system capacity for an outdoor urban deployment with high user density. Therefore, a combined technological and economical analysis is essential before any final judgement can be reached about the viability of large-scale Wi-Fi deployments in TVWS.