The quest for white spaces in the democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

At a time when the opportunistic access to white spaces is a big opportunity for boosting innovation in broadband Internet services, many countries of the developing world are still lagging behind. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, the TV White Space concept has not yet been tabulated in the operational plan of the national regulator, thus leaving a void in terms of white space discovery and usage. While many studies are still conducted to discover white spaces in several countries of the developing world, most developed countries such as the UK and USA have moved beyond the stage of testing and experimentation to embark on real white space deployments. This paper revisits the issue of spectrum sensing to identify white spaces in the UHF analog broadcast spectrum band ranging from 470 MHz to 862 MHz in the DRC. The experimental results collected from the cities of Lubumbashi and Kinshasa reveal significant white spaces in the frequency band. They provide a proof-of-concept that the national regulator could use as a starting point towards the migration to the digital terrestrial television. The experimental framework can also be used by different telecommunication operators and researchers as a guideline for white spaces identification.