Head to Head Battle of TV White Space and WiFi for Connecting Developing Regions

Johnson, David and Zlobinsky, Natasha and Lysko, Albert and Lamola, Magdeline and Hadzic, Senka and Maliwatu, Richard (2016) Head to Head Battle of TV White Space and WiFi for Connecting Developing Regions, Proceedings of 8th EAI International Conference on e‐Infrastructure and e‐Services for Developing Countries (AFRICOMM 2016), 6-7 December 2016, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

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Abstract

TV White Space networks are gaining momentum worldwide as an important addition to the suite of wireless protocols available for connecting developing regions. However, there has been no thorough investigation of scenarios where TV White Space performs better or worse than alternative low-cost wire- less technology such as WiFi. This paper analyzes the performance of 5 GHz WiFi links and TV White space links using down-converted WiFi, typically used as wireless backhaul for poorly connected regions, in different scenarios including line-of-sight links and links obstructed by trees and structures. The experiments make use of 802.11a/b/g WiFi and TV White Space equipment that down- converts standard 802.11 a/b/g WiFi from the 2.4 GHz band into the UHF band. The paper finds that 5 GHz links outperformed TVWS where clear line-of-sight is available and point-to-point links are required. TVWS however is a clear choice where there are obstructions and where wider coverage is needed. Some interesting observations on the negative effect of TV transmissions in adjacent channels a few channel-hops away from the channel being used for TVWS are also provided.

Item Type:	Conference paper
Subjects:	Computing methodologies > Modeling and simulation Computer systems organization > Architectures > Distributed architectures
Date Deposited:	17 Feb 2017
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2019 15:32
URI:	http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/1146

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