Evaluation of spectrum occupancy in Kuala Lumpur of UHF TV band for cognitive radio applications

Preview studies have shown the current spectrum management is not efficient in which a lot of portions of the licensed spectrums are underutilized. TV White Spaces (TVWS) is one of the licensed spectrums that has many unused portions (white spaces) which can be utilized for many wireless broadband services such as WLAN (Wireless Local Area Networks), mobile phone services, and smart grid applications. Consequently there will be a need for more frequency resources in order to satisfy the rising demands for high capacity wireless systems as well as broadband in future. The cognitive radio is deemed a promising paradigm which uses idle spectrum portions in opportunistic manner resulting in increasing the overall spectral efficiency especially in the UHF TV broadcasting band. In this study, the spectrum occupancy measurements is performed in the UHF TV Band which has total (470 to 798) MHz in an indoor environment in a commercial city area of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The analysis of the measurements and the identification of spectrum holes are conducted for two threshold values (-92.97dB and-88.97). The results have shown that the threshold value of -92.97 is better in the term of the accuracy in determining the spectrum occupancy. The results. also show that the average Duty Cycle which refers to the rate of utilized spectrum is (27.89%) which means a lot of portion of spectrum is available for employment of cognitive radio systems as well as TV White Spaces (TVWS) in the UHF TV broadcasting band.