Advanced cognitive radio test-bed with carrier aggregation in TV white space
Jinsuk Pak, Jungsun Um, Hoiyoon Jung, Sangwon Kim, Byung‐Jang Jeong · 2013
Cognitive radio (CR) has been getting attention as a remarkable technology to improve spectrum efficiency by utilizing unused spectrum resources. Especially, many countries have been considering permission for CR-based spectrum usage of TV white space (TVWS). Even though TV band has favorable propagation property compared to other higher frequency bands, CR system in TVWS involves a fundamental limit on system capacity because of a restricted TV channel bandwidth. To overcome it, in this paper, we introduce new CR test-bed with capability of carrier aggregation. By utilizing carrier aggregation functionality, we can effectively utilize multiple TV channels and achieve higher system capacity. Moreover, the test-bed supports non-contiguous carrier aggregation as well as contiguous carrier aggregation. Because unused TV channels are spread over entire TV band sporadically in general, new test-bed provides noticeable performance improvement compared to the existing CR systems in TVWS. Detailed implementation of the test-bed including each functional module is explained, and functional test procedures with corresponding results are provided for evaluation.