Japan's NICT comes to UK for White Spaces trial success

The NICT, a Japanese research institute which has developed TV white spaces (TVWS) technology, has been participating in Ofcom's UK white spaces pilot. It has brought both radios and its own geolocation database.

This gives NICT an opportunity to understand how the TVWS technology can work within the draft UK regulatory framework - by which white space devices obtain access to spectrum via an Ofcom-qualified geolocation database. NICT reports that it has achieved a link performance of up to 40 Mbps over a distance of 3.7 km - within a 4 Watt transmission power limit. The link spans the distance between Denmark Hill and Guys campus locations of Kings College London, with which NICT has been collaborating. Two radio technologies have been deployed in the trial:

• 802.11af (the variant of Wi-Fi designed to exploit the range offered by TV white spaces)
• LTE in a 20 MHz channel, comprising 3 contiguous white space UHF channels - supporting a data rate of 40 Mbps

More details in this press release from NICT.