Patent ID: 8665143

Claim:
A gateway for redistributing an information signal to a user device within a service area, comprising: a spectrum detector capable of monitoring a specified spectrum and identifying a section of a specified spectrum including a plurality of cells of white space sufficient to accommodate a required bandwidth associated with the information signal, a transmitter for transmitting to the user device the information signal over the plurality of cells identified in the section of the spectrum; and a control device for transmitting and receiving bidirectional control messages, wherein the spectrum detector comprises: 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 cells formed within the specified spectrum sections; and a sorting unit for selecting the k pieces of white space from the cells where the energy of the digital signal is under a threshold, wherein the wavelet coefficient calculator uses a wavelet function ψ α,τ (t) providing a concentration of an energy of the cells, in both time and frequency within a finite interval, according to this equation: ∫ψ α,τ (t)dt=0.