Huawei commenced a trial of TD-LTE equipment designed to operate in white-spaces spectrum.
The vendor said it has been testing a TV white space TD-LTE solution since 2009 in labs. The next phase involves Huawei testing the technology's performance in a field trial to see whether it creates interference problems. The trial is expected to end by mid-2012.
"The LTE TDD system can take full advantage of TVWS bandwidth and enhance spectrum efficiency," said Tan Zhu, director of Huawei's wireless strategy department, in a statement. "This LTE TDD system will benefit network and service providers by offering a combination of strong operation and management capability, a mature industry chain, and variety of deployment scenarios."
The FCC voted 5-0 last September to approve rules for white-space devices--officially kick starting the market. U.K. regulator Ofcom recently approved the use of white-space devices, too.
Since white-space is located in the unused slivers of broadcast TV spectrum, databases are required to enable devices to dynamically locate vacant spectrum. Using geolocation, the databases should detect interference with TV broadcasts and other signals and allow white-space devices to jump to free spectrum. The FCC has approved 10 different database providers.
The IEEE standards body completed work in July on 802.22.1 and 802.22.2, which form part of the 802.22 standard for white-space spectrum. The new standard, which defines how wireless broadband can interleave with other signals, is being positioned to provide rural broadband services through wireless regional area networks (WRANS).
For more:
- see this Total Telecom article
Related articles:
FCC to begin white-space database testing
U.K. regulator approves white-space spectrum
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