IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - 45
CloCkwise from top left: steve song; Chomora mikeka (3); Dana Jo photography; google
the United States, and the United Kingdom. In the past several years, hundreds
of trials around the globe have used the
technology to provide wireless broadband access. But Africa has far more
available TV spectrum than any other
part of the world and also the most to
gain from using the technology.
When we began the project at the Mulanje
school in 2015, we started by scanning the
spectrum using an off-the-shelf spectrum
analyzer-a $120 RF Explorer made by
Nuts About Nets, based in Bellevue, Wash.
We ran the spectrum measurements
through our own Linux shell scripts
running on laptops or PCs. Our system
captured data every 3 seconds, geotagging and time-stamping each entry, and
it then calculated the spectrum "occupancy." A typical scan might indicate
that out of the 28 UHF channels allocated
to television stations in the region, just
7 were in use locally-which meant that
three-quarters of the band was free. From
those results, we developed a rule-based
expert system that factors in Malawi's TV
white space regulations and automatically switches the TV white space radio
(from the Ottawa company 6Harmonics)
to an available channel.
For the earlier trial in 2013, in the university town of Zomba, we'd used radios
from Carlson Wireless Technologies,
based in Arcata, Calif. That project was
a partnership between the International
Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in
Trieste, Italy; the Malawi Communica-
online leArning: Schools in Mulanje,
Malawi, and Cape Town, South Africa, now
connect to the Internet through TV white
space networks set up in 2013 and 2015.
Clockwise from upper left: University of
Malawi students show off UHF antennas;
coauthor Mikeka climbs a radio tower;
Mikeka and Jonathan Pinifolo of the Malawi
Communications Regulatory Authority
celebrate with students at Mulanje
Secondary School; Mulanje students learn
how to conduct spectrum scans; antennas
at Cape Town's Tygerberg Hospital send
TV white space signals to 10 schools;
Cape Town students now have access to
educational websites, social media,
and email.
tions Regulatory Authority (MACRA);
and the physics department of Chancellor College at the University of Malawi.
The trial used wideband (470 to 790 MHz)
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
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45
http://SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2016
IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - 1
IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - 2
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IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum September, 2016 - Cover4
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