Digital dividend and its opportunities for long term evolution mobile network: The case of Ethiopia

Digital dividend refers to the additional vacant spectrum that will be available as a result of transition from analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting. Wireless broadband networks such as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) can operate opportunistically in this vacant spectrum by controlling the harmful interference and overheads incurred on licensed users. With the objective of analyzing the digital dividend opportunities, this paper investigates interference mitigation techniques for a possible coexistence of the LTE and television broadcast services deployed in the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Monte Carlo based interference analysis method and cognitive radio-based interference signal detection technique are used for the analysis. Existing parameters of the digital television and LTE are used for the analysis. Based on the results, the band from 700–1429 MHz is identified as a digital dividend from which 795–1429 MHz band can be used for mobile wireless services, particularly for broadband mobile services such as LTE.