Intrinsic challenges (and opportunities) to deploy LTE in Europe's TV white spaces

This contribution presents four business challenges associated with a potential secondary use of European TV white spaces by LTE networks. Based on a quantitative study for 11 representative European countries, we show that Europe's TV white spaces are relatively scarce, diminishing, spatially scattered and heterogeneous, as well as rural in nature. These intrinsic characteristics of the spectrum have implications for the exploitation scenarios by secondary LTE networks that regularly appear as promising use cases. We discuss these implications relation to three LTE use case scenarios: femtocell deployments, rural coverage deployments, and LTE broadcasting/ multicasting deployments.

1. Background

Following recent rulings by the US Federal Communications Commission that opened up significant parts of the TV spectrum for unlicensed use, other countries around the world are currently considering similar measures [1], [2], [3]. In particular, the resulting TV white spaces in the UHF TV band are appreciated for its attractive propagation properties. A number of use cases that regularly appear in the recent literature are related to the secondary use of these TV white spaces by cellular systems like 3GPP's LTE system and its future releases. Hopes are, of course, that the white space spectrum potentially available in the UHF bands can allay the exploding demand for wireless broadband services.