Local and Low-Cost White Space Detection

Abstract

White spaces are portions of the TV spectrum that are allocated but not used locally. Ifaccurately detected, white spaces offer a valuable new opportunity for highspeed wireless communications. We propose a new method for white space detection that allows a node to actlocally, based on a centrally constructed model, and at low cost, whiledetecting more spectrum opportunities than best known approaches. Weleverage two ideas. First, we demonstrate that low-cost spectrum monitoringhardware can offer "good enough" detection capabilities. Second, we develop amodel that combines locally-measured signal features and location to more efficiently detect white space availability. We incorporate these ideas into the design,implementation, and evaluation of a complete system we call Waldo. We deployWaldo on a laptop in the Atlanta metropolitan area in the US covering 700 km2. Our results show that usingsignal features, in addition to location, can improve detection accuracy by up to10x for some channels. We also deploy Waldo on an Android smartphone,demonstrating the feasibility of real-time white space detection with efficientuse of smartphone resources.