Preliminary Performance Assessment of TV White Spaces Technology for Broadband Communication in Malawi

Recently, the use of TV White Spaces for broadband communication has raised interest. White Spaces refer to regions of radio spectrum that are not used all the time in a specific geographical location. This paper presents the preliminary performance assessment of a TV White Spaces deployment in Malawi. The method used involved coverage simulations at the TV White Spaces frequencies, deployment of the network, monitoring and performance analysis. The preliminary results report usable coverage distance up to 7.5 km which has allowed that remote students access the content of the university library and interact with the university faculty. The results thus show that the TV White Spaces technology can be used for broadband connectivity in rural and undeserved areas even when the WiFi and broadcasting spectrum is already utilized. A typical application that supports remote access of e-library resources from a rural Secondary School was developed using DSpace architecture over the White Spaces infrastructure is discussed.