Digital Dividend and Its Opportunities For Long Term Evolution Mobile Network: The Case of Ethiopia
Digital Dividend and Its Opportunities For Long Term Evolution Mobile Network: The Case of Ethiopia
Digital Dividend and Its Opportunities For Long Term Evolution Mobile Network: The Case of Ethiopia
Abstract—Digital dividend refers to the additional vacant significant degradation of performance to the incumbent users
spectrum that will be available as a result of transition from [1]. The fundamental step in CR network is the spectrum
analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting. Wireless sensing which aims to learn the radio environment in order to
broadband networks such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) can op-
erate opportunistically in this vacant spectrum by controlling the adapt the CR transmission. Thus, reliable and efficient signal
harmful interference and overheads incurred on licensed users. detection and spectrum sensing techniques are needed in order
With the objective of analyzing the digital dividend opportunities, to detect and explore the presence of radio frequency spectrum
this paper investigates interference mitigation techniques for a holes and vacant spaces under controlled interference [1].
possible coexistence of the LTE and television broadcast services The transition towards terrestrial digital television (DTV)
deployed in the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Monte Carlo
based interference analysis method and cognitive radio-based transmission brings an opportunity of free frequency spectrum
interference signal detection technique are used for the analysis. bands that can be used for other services. These free spectrum
Existing parameters of the digital television and LTE are used bands constitute the digital dividend. Accordingly, the digital
for the analysis. Based on the results, the band from 700-1429 dividend may be defined as the amount of spectrum made
MHz is identified as a digital dividend from which 795-1429 MHz available as a result of the transition of terrestrial television
band can be used for mobile wireless services, particularly for
broadband mobile services such as LTE. broadcasting from analogue to digital in the very high
Index Terms—Digital Dividend, Spectrum Access, Interference frequency (VHF) and ultrahigh frequency (UHF) bands
management. [2,3]. The free spectrum can be used to fill the spectrum
requirement of the mobile broadband such as Long-Term
I. I NTRODUCTION Evolution (LTE). Moreover, as the waves in the UHF band
Nowadays, the demand for higher data rates is increasing offer the possibility of long-range transmission, operating in
as a result of the rapid evolution of new wireless services this band allows larger coverage area with few infrastructures.
and applications. However, the available radio frequency spec- However, exploiting the digital dividend requires proper
trum needed to support these services is not only limited analysis of interference that occur due to simultaneous
but also its allocation and management is still based on transmission of digital TV and LTE in adjacent frequency
the traditional static techniques. It is obvious that this static bands [2,3,4]. DSA is one of the techniques that assist
frequency allocation schemes cannot meet the requirements of wireless users to dynamically search and access idle spectrum
the increasing demands. Measurement campaigns conducted and to continuously monitor that spectrum bands to avoid
in various parts of the world have supported the findings interference [1].
that the static spectrum access leads to some portions of
the spectrum to be overcrowded while some other to be In Ethiopia, Ethio-Telecom is the sole telecommunication
underutilized [1]. This inefficiency in the spectrum usage network operator and is widely deploying its mobile networks
and allocation necessitates a new communication paradigm throughout the country. Based on a recent report the number
to effectively explore and exploit the radio frequency spec- of mobile subscribers in the country has reached 53 million
trum opportunities. Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) was [5]. This is 11% higher than the preceding fiscal year and
proposed as a new spectrum sharing methodology that allows the operator is further expanding its networks to have over
non-licensed wireless devices to opportunistically operate on 100 million subscribers in the next few years [5]. LTE is
licensed bands by controlling the harmful interference and now available in the capital city, Addis Ababa, basically to
overheads incurred on the licensed users [1]. DSA utilizes provide data services. On the broadcast side, there are limited
spectrum holes and alleviates the spectrum scarcity problem numbers of terrestrial television channels for now. However,
and improves spectrum utilization [1]. The cognitive radio the Federal Government has approved the digitization process
(CR) technology, on the other hand, is built on a software and the DTV broadcast service implementation is on its
defined radio that uses the principle of DSA in which a set planning stage [6]. Further, for a country like Ethiopia
of unlicensed users occupy spectrum holes without causing with more than 100 Million people and enormous ethnic
Fig. 3. Probability function of translation parameters of the interfering transmitter at 0.1km guard distance from each axes of the victim link receiver and
with 0.5 MHz guard band.
Fig. 4. Probability function of translation parameters of the interfering transmitter for the case studied when CR based signal detection technique is enabled.
On the other hand, when cognitive radio based detection paper shows that the use of cognitive radio based detection
algorithm is deployed at the interfering transmitter, it will have techniques helps to bypass the restrictions laid on separation
a great impact to further reduce the interference probability, distances and guard bands, and it gives more dimension for
and to effectively and efficiently utilize the radio spectrum. efficient explore and exploitation of spectrum holes.
In our model, we assumed that the interfering transmitter The future work will be to develop more robust interference
(LTE-BS) detects/senses a signal from the wanted transmitter free model that perform further study on adjustment of antenna
(DVT-BS) and checks if the level of the sensing signal is patterns, antenna discrimination, down tilting of antennas, and
less than the threshold set by its system. If it is so, the spatial LTE planning in relation to DTV system.
LTE-BS can send the signal to its desired receiver (LTE-UE)
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VI. C ONCLUSION
This paper analyzed that separation of two coexisted radio
transmitters with geographical distance and specific guard
band set shall give a good insight for optimal utilization of
the spectrum. This helps radio planners and telecom oper-
ators to design their spectrum refarming strategy that will
minimize interference between coexist systems. Moreover, the