Interview with Dr Chomora Mikeka: TV white spaces in Malawi, a success story full of challenges

While reading and writing about TV white spaces in Malawi, I was impressed with the struggle of local research leaders to leverage such emerging and very promising technologies.

Today, I’m very glad to share with you this post wherein we will have an amazing and exciting interview with my esteemed guest and friend Dr Chomora Mikeka, who will enlighten us on the success story about deploying broadband connectivity over TV white spaces in Malawi. Foremost, I would like to thank Dr Mikeka for accepting to, generously, share his brilliant experience and advice with us and for having this friendly but appealing conversation.

 For those of you who don't know him, Dr. Chomora Mikeka is a young professor holding a PhD from the Division of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering at Yokohama National University, Japan. His PhD research was about power autonomous sensor radio based on cellular and digital TV RF energy harvesting. He has vast experience on research in ICT for agriculture, health and education. He is an innovator and has collaborated in the design, simulations and fabrication of an ultra low power DC-DC buck boost converter with regulated output for less than a milliwatt RF energy harvesting used in modern day communications devices. This was done with colleagues in Spain. He has held a Lecturer position at the Graduate School of Information Technology (Kobe Institute of Computing), training
30 African participants on Problem Resolution for Development Issues by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) *(J11-30012 )* (a JICA funded project).

Apart from being a lecturer, Dr. Chomora Mikeka coordinates the e-Communications Research Group (eCRG) on several research topics and projects, one such being on TV White Spaces Technology for Broadband Rural-Connect in Malawi. In 2013, this unit became the Center of Excellence in the country on ICT as awarded by the National Commission of Science and Technology.  Dr. Mikeka has several Awards including the 2009 European Microwave Association Student Challenge Prize in Rome (Italy). He won the 2011 IEEE RWW, Biomedical Radio and Wireless Technologies, Network and Sensing Systems Second Best Paper Award in Phoenix, Arizona (USA). He won the IEEE RFID-TA 2011, Third Best Paper Award in Sitges, Barcelona (Spain). He won the 2010 Yokohama National University International Science Exchange Encouragement Award in Yokohama (Japan). He is the 2014 - 2019 Junior Associate of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. His biography is included in the 27th edition of Marquis Who's Who in the World. He is the Laureate of IBC TOP 100 ENGINEERS in 2010.

Dr Mikeka has kindly accepted to answer the following questions and provide a detailed analysis very important for a complete understanding of the power of TV white spaces and the technical feasibility of such promising technologies:

Q. How did you get the idea of exploiting TV white spaces to deliver broadband internet in rural areas? And why not other solutions like ADSL, 3G or LTE?

A. When you think that precious stones are often hidden and that beautiful character is not obvious, save when you go a mile to dig it; I thought about what is hidden in between radio frequency channels i.e. the guard bands or band gaps. Physics of semiconductors has taught us of the potential energy that exists in band gaps. it was therefore attractive to explore what potential existed in gaps between active radio channels. These gaps appear as blank spaces in spectrum measurements; so we could call them "blank spaces." When a TV screen is tuned in to a "blank space or empty channel" in the VHF or UHF bands, it displays "white spaces or spots" for no signal and therefore we could coin the term "white spaces" or indeed "white spots." Typically, spectral sensing approach (supported by ICTP, Italy and MACRA, Malawi) using low cost tools (the shadoof approach, typical of Africa technologies), revealed that the TV white spaces (TVWS) are abundant in several instances due to very few TV channels in use, mostly in rural or sparsely populated areas. This is where we ceased the opportunity, inspired by the Japanese term, "mottainai" conveying a sense of regret concerning waste. Therefore, from the quickest thought of, "what if we opportunistically slotted in some other radio communication in these white spaces?" The answer was positive, and typically, broadband internet came into mind for the following reasons:

1. Mobile operators and ISPs do not find economic sense to provide broadband into rural communities, yet this is where it is needed the most in order to support the socio-economic activities to more than 80% of the Malawi rural population.

2. 3G base stations (BS) have typical urban radius coverage of 4 km whereas for the rural areas, 3G base stations are scanty and one BS could extend close to 31 km, but at a cost too huge (in terms of power and base station infrastructure) compared to our TVWS base stations which can extend coverage to 20 km (tested and operational).

3. Other technologies like fixed broadband wireless (FBW) have huge license fees, and suffer interference from environmental conditions especially in the microwave and millimeter wave bands.

4. ISM band technologies in 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands suffer hugely from interference in the multipath environment and obstruction in foliage i.e. lacking capability to penetrate.

Above all, the TVWS base station offers light-weight infrastructure (modern world paradigm shift) unlike the existing known technologies; thereby saving on deployment, maintenance and energy (kW-hr) costs. A typical TVWS base station could be powered and managed with 30 W and hence suitable for rural deployment even off grid, given alternative energy sources.

Q. Until now, what has been achieved in terms of serving high speed internet in rural zones in Malawi and what will be achieved in the next years?

A. 

1. One school (St. Marys Secondary School) has been connected and the senior pupils at this school are able to access more study materials from the University and National digital libraries and repositories using an infrastructure network that we coined, "WhiteSpaces for DSpaces." The school is connected at 2.4 km from the TVWS base station. This guarantees quality education and career guidance for the pupils toward qualifying for tertiary education.

2. The Seismology Department responsible for seismic wave detection and analysis is able to get their data in quasi real time unlike in the past wherein they had to wait for a month to have data collected in compact flash cards and downloaded offline. This connection is over a distance of 1.7 km. This enhances the capability for national early warning and disaster preparedness.

3. The Air Wing of the Malawi Defense Force connected at 7 km from the BS had no Internet at the maintenance section for their dornier aircrafts. With the installation of the TVWS network, the engineers are able to communicate and maintain their defense aircrafts with online support. This guarantees national security.

4. One hospital (Pirimiti Community Hospital) is connected at approximately 20 km distance from the base station. This is an unprecedented achievement regarding the longest TVWS link ever on record world-wide as of 1st May, 2014. Using this link virtual diagnosis is possible. In future, we would like to experiment with real time x-Ray image transport and human body operation scene coverage in order to support expert opinion from remote medical specialists. This guarantees quality of life.

Q. What about urban areas in Malawi?

A. Urban areas in Malawi are not a priority at the moment. Besides, connectivity in those areas is available albeit at service tariffs that end users complain to be on a higher side compared to neighbouring countries. It is therefore our mandate to first address the challenge for the populace disconnected areas of Malawi and benefit the larger population than a select few.

Q. In your opinion, what are the perspectives of cognitive radio networks in Malawi, Africa and world-wide?

A. Cognitive radio is the answer for most of the demands in the radio and wireless technology world-wide. I often say, "cognitive radio has some brain and a backbone" and has proved agile and smart in the tactical communication for the military operations, hence a promising technology for the civilian world as well. For technologies like TVWS, we need radios which can connect, associate, link and transact opportunistically, and where possible promiscuously for obvious reasons. Such capabilities require a level of intelligent sensing and decision making, and this is only possible with cognitive radios or the so called Software Defined Radios (SDRs). Africa is lagging is the development, testing and utilization of cognitive radios; however, I know of CSIR researchers in South Africa who have prototyped a White RHINO (Whitespace Reconfigurable Hardware Interface for ComputiNg and RadiO), a sort of cognitive radio platform.  First published by IEEE in April 2013, the White RHINO was developed because of the dearth of low cost hardware platforms, which are specifically tailored for such a purpose like the TV white spaces communication. Africa should therefore explore and exploit possible partnerships and collaborations within the continent to excel in the development of radio hardware platforms to reduce expenditure on the imported communication hardware infrastructure, even the end user terminals.

Q. What is the type of applications that interest rural population in Malawi: multimedia, audio, e-mailing,...?

A. Ofcourse, e-mailing is first, because, everyone would like to communicate. The other useful and critical applications are those that support mobile clinics or clinicians (e-healthcare) and education including scholarly resource mobilization and knowledge management. Financial transactions, security alerts require authenticate digital signatures, and therefore could not be deployed with little thought in this era of cyber crimes.

The roadmap for the TVWS technology in Malawi in brief is as follows. May the Regulator (MACRA) will hold stakeholder consultations where TVWS draft regulations will be presented and deliberated. Upon successful outcomes from the May consultations, the regulations shall be published in the Government of Malawi Gazette any date from June. This shall now allow operators and investors in Malawi and abroad to role out the technology, given an ISP license from the regulator, and paid up fees (at a cost revealed in the regulations) for any dynamically allocated TV channel.

The goal, once the regulations are approved and gazetted is to scale up the network across the nation with emphasis on the rural areas and at a cost affordable than the existing technologies, given the same or improved broadband performance in terms of throughput (speed) and resilience to channel fading and signal loss. 

Moreover, an attempt to provide traffic offloading solutions to the existing mobile and wireless networks shall be made; to ensure democratic operation and co-existence with mature technologies.