White space trial in London is successful, says Japan’s NICT
1 min read
In a trial which is said to be the first of its kind in a large city, Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has successfully established a 3.7km white space wireless link between two London locations and achieved a throughput of more than 40Mbit/s. The trial used operational parameters provided by a database and deployed mobile broadband communications system successfully.
In the trial, which used an IEEE802.11af based system, data was transmitted between a base station in Denmark Hill, south London, and a mobile terminal in central London. The trial, which is part of Ofcom's TV White Spaces pilot, was accompanied by NICT implementing a TV white space database which met Ofcom's specifications. The database enabled the transmission system to take account of locations, occupied channels, transmission power and transmission schedules.
According to NICT, the trial was influenced by the nearby high power Crystal Palace TV transmitter and by a number of programme making and special events (PMSE) users, who operate at different locations using different channels and schedules.
'It was a big challenge for us to operate the TV white space communications systems in such environment by looking for suitable channels and suitable transmission power' said NICT. 'The trials reminded us about the unique characteristics of spectrum usage in the TV bands in large and crowded cities and clarified the performance requirements to TV white space communications systems operating in this environment'.
'It is expected that the experiences and the results obtained from the trials will contribute to the R&D of TV white space communications systems, and to the development of regulations regarding TV white space communications'.
NICT joined the Ofcom pilot as a device developer and a database developer. It noted that, because of the intensive and dynamic use of the spectrum in a large city, it is a challenge to ensure the database uses the most up to date information to calculate operational parameters in real-time and for the devices to communicate regularly with the database to exchange operational parameters.
