Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to better utilize “white space” networks, which would tap into unused TV spectrum to deliver broadband services. In the first version of KNOWS, Microsoft introduced the concept of Time Spectrum Blocks (TSB) as the fundamental unit over which two nodes could communicate. They designed a control-channel based medium access control protocol for enabling nodes with different spectrum views to access the medium. In the second version of KNOWS, Microsoft looked at the problem of setting up a base station in the white spaces spectrum. In this system, called WhiteFi, they eliminated the need for a dedicated control channel. In addition, they proposed a new technique that enables nodes to rapidly discover base stations operating at different center frequencies using different channel widths by analyzing signals in the time domain.Learn more from Microsoft Research.
Networking Over White Spaces (KNOWS)
