Sensing the TV band Using TV tuner

Abstract

Spectrum sensing is a key to an enabling technology for white space access, because sensing is a method of measuring spectrum to detect primary transmitters for the express purpose of protecting the primary receivers (licensed users) and to avoid interference with secondary users (unlicensed users) by detecting and using only the available channels. A novel low complexity system containing low cost TV tuner has been designed to sense the UHF TV band spectrum. The used tuner module was modified to scan automatically the UHF TV band spectrum. Microcontroller chip was programmed using micro Pascal software to control the TV tuner for scanning the TV band. This programed microcontroller chip controlled the TV tuner through internal Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO). The implemented system has been used to measure the utilization of the UHF TV band covering the frequency range from 470 to 860 MHz in Cairo (EGYPT). The designed system had a scanning time comparable to the commercial similar systems, and with lower cost. The measurements have been taken at the ASUFE (Ain Shams University Faculty of Engineering) buildings, which roughly 4.5 km away from the TV transmitter station. The resulted data were analyzed to obtain the spectrum utilization.