South Africa- and Botswana-based research institutions have teamed up to research dynamic spectrum access and the sharing of television (TV) band frequencies using a TV white space (TVWS) experimental network.
South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) committed to assisting the Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation (BITRI) as it designed and deployed the TVWS network test-bed.
The proposed network would form the basis of collaborative research on dividing spectrum across multiple uses or multiple user groups, as opposed to the current spectrum regimes of licensing the communication platform for a fixed period to a primary user, said CSIR wireless computing and networking senior researcher Moshe Masonta in a statement on Tuesday.
“There is high demand for spectrum below 5 GHz band, especially in developing countries, where there is a challenge to connect over one-billion people. Through our long-term collaborative research, development and innovation agreement, BITRI will be able to use the intellectual property on aspects of the CSIR’s geolocation spectrum database to do further research on dynamic spectrum allocation for broadband access,” he said.
Five schools and two clinics in Gaborone had been identified as TVWS trial sites for the research project, which would also aid Botswana’s TVWS regulations and policy development, said BITRI TVWS project manager Dr Ephraim Gower in the joint statement.
A similar CSIR-led project had connected ten Cape Town schools to the Internet using TVWS. The institution had also collaborated with the Ghana Technology University College to connect six schools through TVWS in Accra.
Later this year, the CSIR aimed to present a capacity-building workshop on TVWS in Botswana.