WhiteHaul: white space spectrum aggregation system for backhaul

Today almost half the world's population does not have Internet access. This is particularly the case in rural and undeserved regions where providing Internet access infrastructure is challenging and expensive. To this end, we present demonstration of WhiteHaul [5], a low-cost hybrid cross-layer aggregation system for TV White Space (TVWS) based backhaul. WhiteHaul features a custom-designed frequency conversion substrate that efficiently handles multiple noncontiguous chunks of TVWS spectrum using multiple low-cost COTS 802.11n/ac cards but with a single antenna. At the software layer, WhiteHaul uses MPTCP as a link-level tunnel abstraction to efficiently aggregate multiple chunks of the TVWS spectrum via a novel uncoupled, cross-layer congestion control algorithm. This demo illustrates the unique features of the WhiteHaul system based on a prototype implementation employing a modified version of MPTCP Linux Kernel and a custom-designed conversion substrate. Using this prototype, we highlight the performance of the WhiteHaul system under various configurations and network conditions.