Patent ID: 8155039

Claim:
A gateway for redistributing an information signal of a specified bandwidth to a user device within a service area, comprising: a spectrum detector for identifying k frequency-time cells of white space sufficient to accommodate the specified bandwidth of the information signal, where k is an integer, k≧1, the spectrum detector comprising a tunable RF module for scanning specified spectrum sections and capturing any wireless signal present in the spectrum sections, an analog to digital converter for converting the captured wireless signal to a digital signal, a wavelet coefficient calculator for measuring an energy of the digital signal in each of a plurality of frequency-time cells formed within the specified spectrum sections, and a sorting unit for selecting the k-frequency-time cells of white space where the energy of the digital signal is under a threshold; and a transmitter for transmitting the information signal over the identified k frequency-time cells of white space to the user device; wherein the wavelet coefficient calculator uses a wavelet function ψ ατ (t) providing a concentration of an energy of the frequency-time cells, in both time and frequency within a finite interval, according to this equation: ∫ψ ατ (t)dt=0, where α represents the scaling parameter of the wavelet waveform and τ represents the shifting parameter of the wavelet waveform.