Survey of outdoor and indoor architecture design in TVWS networks

To understand the utilizability of TV white spaces (TVWS), a comprehensive overview of the outdoor and indoor network design over TVWS is given. The related challenges are analyzed. The potential approaches to overcoming these challenges are discussed. The open research issues are investigated. The result shows that: in the indoor scenario, the white space ratio is on average 18.4% higher than that in the outdoor scenario, which corresponds to 7.7 vacant TV channels. Both network design includes 7 key components: TV spectrum identification, access point (AP) discovery, AP association, spectrum allocation, band width adaptation, interface control and disruption handling. Due to building penetration loss, the indoor TVWS identification and AP placement should be carefully considered in the indoor scenario.