A Framework for Wireless Broadband Network for Connecting the Unconnected

A significant barrier in providing affordable rural broadband is to connect the rural and remote places to the optical Point of Presence (PoP) over a distances of few kilometers. A lot of work has been done in the area of long distance WiFi networks. However, these networks require tall towers and high gain (directional) antennas. Also, they work in unlicensed band which has Effective Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP) limit (e.g. 1 W in India) which restricts the network design. In this work, we propose a Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTEA) network operating in TV UHF to connect the remote areas to the optical PoP. In India, around 100 MHz of TV UHF band IV (470-585 MHz) is unused at any location and can be put to an effective use in these areas [1]. We explore the idea of multi-hop topology for the proposed network. We also compare the performance of multi-hop network with the Point to Multipoint (PMP) topology. The results show that multi-hop network performs much better than the PMP network. We then formulate a Linear Programming (LP) problem of generating optimal topology and compare its performance with the multihop network. Overall, the analysis implies that an optimally planned LTE-A network in TV UHF band can be a potential solution for affordable rural broadband.