CO-CHANNEL INTERFERENCE PREDICTION IN THE VHF AND UHF FREQUENCY BANDS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

In order to satisfy the various increasing demands by both existing and new radio services, operating within a limited and internationally controlled national frequency spectrum allocation, a number of transmitters may have to share the same frequency. One major result of frequency sharing is radio interference between stations that share the same frequency. If co-channel interference) to be avoided, adequate protection must be given to individual transmitters. In this work, proposed broadcasting services that may have to share frequency with existing services radiocommunication were identified from the data of the list of proposed services. They were grouped together on the basis of frequency. Relevant propagation parameters are used to compute and assess what protection against co-channel interference, individual transmitters of a co-channel pair enjoy. A user friendly computer program was developed to predict the adequacy of the protection against co-channel interference enjoyed by individual transmitters, where protection was inadequate, this program will effected corrective processes that was able to achieve adequate protection for both existing and new radio communication services in the VHF and UHF frequency bands. Qualitative results were deduced and shown in tables and histograms, and, appropriate recommendations were made.