Design of Broadcasting Single Frequency Network (SFN) for effective frequency management in Rwanda, Improvement of Coverage Probability

Abstract

The increased demand for mobile broadband services has led the increasingly demand of more frequency spectrum in mobile services. The frequency band 470-862 MHz initially assigned to terrestrial television broadcasting has been identified suitable for mobile services. The trend is that broadband services will acquire more frequencies from television broadcasting and already the band 694-862MHz making a total of 168MHz bandwidth have been assigned to mobile broadband services. Therefore, regulators of telecommunication services are looking alternative way for effective utilization of the available frequency band 470-694MHz [9]. In this thesis we will focus on re-planning the available television frequencies and enhance the coverage probability of OFDM based SFNs network. The simultaneous transmissions of same frequencies in SFN create severe inter-symbol interference at the receiver and this thesis has addressed such type of interference by choosing the appropriate guard band interval. An analysis on the receiver performance has been performed resulting into obtaining the minimum transmitter required of 7 for achieving maximum diversity gain in the random model. Further, we prove that for a site that initially had 4 or 5 broadcasting frequencies, it is possible to use 9 frequencies in single frequency networks and in order to obtain 100% of television signals coverage in the territory of Rwanda, three more sites Mushubati, Bumbogo and Rucamatako have been added in the terrestrial television coverage analysis. Lastly, the proposed SFN frequencies plan shall help the regulator of telecommunication services to effectively assign the frequencies to the number of signal distributors and more TV stations shall come into the market hence increasing job creation.