Spectrum Occupancy Measurement:Focus on the TV Frequency

Yanfeng Han Yijin Wen Wanbin Tang Shaoqian Li

National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Communications,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China ,
Chengdu, Sichan, China.
AbstractDynamic spectrum access to the unused licensed
spectrum has been proposed as a solution to the spectrum
scarcity problem. However, efcient spectrum sensing
techniques are crucial on the way towards systems, which use
idle spectrum bands opportunistically and increase the overall
spectral efciency. The spectrum occupancy measurement is
very important for the efficient spectrum sensing. Current
spectrum occupancy was evaluated in few measurement
campaigns. This paper describes spectrum occupancy
measurement about TV spectrum source performed in
Chengdu. Through analysis measurement result, we can find
the idle spectrum band which can be used by the Cognitive
Radio.
I. INTRODUCTION
The recent success of wireless communication and its
services has resulted in an increasing need for radio
spectrum. However, several measurements have shown
that spectrum usage is rather inefcient because multiple
services are active either only for a fraction of time or in a
fraction of the spatial area the license is valid for
[5][2][3]
.Then,
dynamic spectrum access (DSA) technologies have
attracted signicant interest in the research community.
which can use idle spectrum and increase the spectral
efficiency. However, the coverage of locations is still much
smaller than the number of different regulations existent in
different countries.
In this paper, spectrum analyzer is used to survey the
power spectral density of the frequency. These
measurements were taken over a two-weeks period .The
main goal of this work is to get the data of spectrum for the
future researches, such as the modeling of the spectrum, the
study on the efficient algorithm of sensing spectrum and
transmission schemes.
The whole wireless frequency band is so widely. But we
only focus on the TV bands. The TV bands have strong
periodicity. The measurement of TV bands is very useful
for the future researches. The measurement results can not
be applied directly to another country. Since the spectrum
occupancy depends on the geographical region. In this paper,
We focus on 694MHz-806MHZ,Since for a TV band, the
span is 8MHz,Then, The measurement result is about 14
channels.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
describes the measurement setup. In the Section 3, we will
discuss our measurement results and show the impact of the
decision threshold too. Then, We analyze the results in more
detail in section 4 and conclude the paper in section 5.
II. MEASUREMENT SETUP
A. Measurement Equipment and software
Our measurement setup consists of a laptop, which
remote controls a Rohde & Schwarz FSU high performance
spectrum analyzer via cross-over Ethernet cable. We used a
large discone antenna (a). The antenna is vertically
polarized. Use the coaxial cable to connect the antenna and
the FSU. All equipment besides the antenna was put indoor.
The figure 1 shows how the equipment connective.
a. Larqe dscone anlenna ACP DA5000.
b. Verson 7.9.0P2009b).
c. Lallude 30`44'54.84' Norlh. Lonqlude !03`55'3!.00' Easl.

Figure 1. Measurement equipment configuration
The MATLAB software package (b) was used to remote
control the spectrum analyzer and the measurement process,
save data and analyze the data later. The detailed settings
used for the spectrum analyzer are listed in table 1.
TABLE I. SPECTRUM ANALYSER CONFIGURATION
Band 1: 698 MHz
Band 2: 706 MHz
Band 3: 714 MHz

Band 12: 786 MHz
Band 13: 794 MHz
Center frequency
Band 14: 802 MHz
Frequency span 8 MHz
Resolution bandwidth 1 kHz
Sweep points 1999
Sweep time 800 ms
Detector type Average detector
Preamplifier 0 dB gain
B. Geographical location
The measurement was performed on the roof of an office
building in Chengdu (c). The building is the highest
building of all around. The different transmitters had
directline connection of sight to the measurement
location.The figure 2 shows the measurement location.
2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)
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Figure 2. Geographical locations of the measurement
III. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
In order to give a general overview of the spectrum usage
we start our discussion with the minimum, average, and
maximum power spectral density (PSD) measured per each
band. Figure 3
[8]
show these results for the measured all
spectrum sub-band from 6-April-2010 09:30 to 7-April-
2010 09:38. However the measurement has been taken in
seven days.
In the following section, we will show the spectrum
occupancy.
A. Spectrum Occupancy
If an energy detector is used to decide about spectrum
occupancy, the PSD is compared to the decision threshold.
The threshold is an important parameter to decide the
spectrum occupancy. If the measured PSD in a certain
frequency band that above the threshold will be report as
occupied. If the measured PSD is below, the frequency band
will be reported as idle.
In order to determine the noise threshold, we take
several measurements without the Antenna connected.
Afterwards we used the distribution of the measured noise
samples to determine that a threshold 8dB higher than the
measured noise floor leads to a false alarm probability of
about 1% caused by noise sample with high power
[5]
. The
reason of selected margin of 8dB is that the measurement
results have large fluctuations. If we choose a smaller
margin, the false alarm probability will be large.
Figure 4 and 5 compare the average and maximum PSD
to the thermal noise level as measurements. The reported
noise measurement were performed with the same spectrum
analyzer settings as used for the spectrum occupancy
measurements and are averaged over long time periods
guaranteeing representative results. From the figure 4 and 5
we can see that the average PSD is above the thermal noise
level. Figure 4 and 5 show the spectrum occupancy status.
The 798-806MHz sub-band can be report as occupied. For
more details analysis the spectrum, we will discuss the duty
cycle in the next section.


Figure 3. Minimum, average and maximum PSD measured in the all the spectrum band from 694-806 MHz
2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)
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Figure 4. Comparison of measurement results to the measured thermal
noise floor for 694 to 702 MHz.

Figure 5. Comparison of measurement results to the measured thermal
noise floor for 798 to 806 MHz
B. Duty Cycle
In this Section we introduce a stochastic model for the
distribution of the duty cycle based on the 1 kHz resolution
bandwidth that we used throughout our measurement
[5]
.
We use the detection threshold as the back ground noise
levels and achieve realistic estimates of the duty cycle. We
evaluate the threshold value = -117dBm/1kHz.
Let denote the spectrum occupancy at time index t
and channel index , defined as
, t i
:
i
, ,
,
, ,
0
1
{
rx t i
t i
rx t i
PSD if
PSD if
J
J

:
t
,
Where is the received PSD measured in
channel and at time index . If =1, a primary user
signal is detected and the channel is occupied. PSD values
below indicate a free channel. Furthermore, let us denote
as the number of measured samples in channel i and
as the duty cycle computed for channel :
, , rx t i
PSD
i t
, t i
:
i
N
DC
i
i

,
1
i
N
t i
t
i
i
DC
N

.
Figure 6 shows the frequency band 694-806MHz duty
cycle. Figure 7, 8 and 9 show three sub-bands duty cycle.
From the four figures we can see all band duty cycle and
the details for some sub-bands.
IV. ANALYSIS
The TV frequency spectrum is very stably. It is far
different from the GSM, in which the user can burst into the
frequency band. So we want figure out how the TV
frequency spectrum change with time.
The figure 10 shows the 694-702MHz sub-band the
time variety. We can see this band was occupied all the day.
But other sub-band isnt the same with that. The figure 11
shows the 798-806MHz sub-band. after 24:00, the sub-band
is idle. From previously analysis, we know why the duty
cycle distributions like before. Almost sub-band occupancy
is periodic by 24 hours. The figure 12 and 13 show the same
sub-band in different day, the band occupancy is different.

Figure 6. The duty cycle based on measurement from 694 to 806MHz.

Figure 7. The duty cycle based on measurement from 694 to 702MHz
2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)
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Figure 8. The duty cycle based on measurement from 710 to 718MHz.

Figure 9. The duty cycle based on measurement from 798 to 806MHz.

Figure 10. The PSD time distribution based on the measurement from 694
to 702MHz. The date is 06-April-2010 09:30 to 07-April-2010 09:38

Figure 11. The PSD time distribution based on the measurement from 798
to 806MHz. The date is 06-April-2010 09:30 to 07-April-2010 09:38

Figure 12. The PSD time distribution based on the measurement from 766
to 774MHz. The date is 06-April-2010 09:30 to 07-April-2010 09:38

Figure 13. The PSD time distribution based on the measurement from 766
to 774MHz. The date is 08-April-2010 09:30 to 09-April-2010 09:38
2010 2nd International Conference on Signal Processing Systems (ICSPS)
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We will present the amplitude probability distribution
[5]

(APD) analysis method to investigate the primary user
activity in the next section.
A. Amplitude probability distribution(APD)
APD
[8]
is a three-dimensional histogram with one axis
being amplitude, one being frequency span, and another
being the probability of each amplitude value throughout the
whole measurement period. Key characteristics such as
signal bandwidth, transmitter mobility, number of
transmitters, etc. can be very well estimated by evaluating a
small part of the amplitude probability distribution. The
underlying principle of APD analysis is that different
equipments and devices show distinct behavior in terms of
PSD and signal characteristics. Such transmitter
characteristics can be deduced from the statistical
distribution of the amplitude probability. Figure 14 show the
APD of the measurements covering the frequency range of
694MHz to 806MHz. Between 798 and 806MHz peaks with
flat distribution labeled by marker 1 can be observed with a
small variation of the PSD (nearly 100 dBm). We can see
the band 758-766MHz and 782-790MHz is the same as the
798-806MHz. So we all mark as 1. These characteristics
imply those bands had been occupied by the digital mobile
TV. We can see the many high peeks exit in the band 694-
806MHz. We mark those as 2. These characteristics imply
those bands were used by the TV video frequency and sound
frequency. The height and the width of the peak jointly
describe the stability of the transmission power. The higher
and the narrower the peak, the more constant the
transmission power is. All this information should be used to
improve the CRs search for idle spectrum bands for
opportunistic usage.

Figure 14. Amplitude probability distribution of the power levels
measured from 06-April-2010 09:30 to 07-April-2010 09:38 in the
spectrum band 694-806MHz
V. CONCLUSION
Our measurements showed that the spectrum occupancy
highly depends on the decision threshold chosen to
differentiate idle and used bands. We will increase the
number of measurement locations and also take into account
the differences in frequency regulations. As part of our
future work we plan to do measurements at further
locations and continue to investigate our results
statistically in order to develop modeling strategies for
spectrum occupancy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported in part by Nation Grand Special
Science and Technology Project of China under Grant No.
2009ZX03005-004,2008ZX03005-001,2009ZX03007-004,
2009ZX03003-009, 2010ZX03006-002,and 2009ZX03005-
002-02, High-Tech Research and Development Program
(863 Program) of China under Grant No. 2009AA011801
and 2009AA012002, National Fundamental Research
Program of China under Grant A1420080150, and National
Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China under
Grant No. 2009CB320405, Foundation Project of National
Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on
Communications under Grant No. 9140C0202061004,
National Science and Technology Ministry (ID
2008BAH30B12and Special Project on Broadband
Wireless Access sponsored by Huawei co., ltd..
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