Providing connectivity to around half of the world population living in rural or underprivileged areas is a tremendous challenge, but, at the same time, a unique opportunity. Access to the Internet would provide the population living in these areas a possibility to progress on the educational, health, environment, and business levels. In this article, a survey of technologies for providing connectivity to rural areas, which can help address this challenge, is provided. Although access/fronthaul and backhaul techniques are discussed in this article, it is noted that the major limitation for providing connectivity to rural and underprivileged areas is the cost of backhaul deployment. In addition, energy requirements and cost-efficiency of the studied technologies are analyzed. In fact, the challenges faced for deploying an electricity network, as a prerequisite for deploying communication networks, are huge in these areas, and they are granted an important share of the discussions in this article. Furthermore, typical application scenarios in rural areas are discussed, and several country-specific use cases are surveyed. The main initiatives by key international players aiming to provide rural connectivity are also described. Moreover, directions for the future evolution of rural connectivity are outlined in this article. Although there is no single solution that can solve all rural connectivity problems, building gradually on the current achievements in order to reach ubiquitous connectivity, while taking into account the particularities of each region and tailoring the solution accordingly, seems to be the most suitable path to follow.

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A Key 6G Challenge and Opportunity—Connecting the Base of the Pyramid: A Survey on Rural Connectivity

With the rapid increase in the number of mobile users, wireless access technologies are evolving to provide mobile users with high data rates and support new applications that include both human and machine-type communications. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets), created by the joint installation of macro cells and a large number of densely deployed small cells, are considered an important solution to deal with the increasing network capacity demands and provide high coverage to wireless users in future fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. Due to the increasing complexity of network topology in 5G HetNets with the integration of many different base station types, in 5G architecture mobility management has many challenges. Intense deployment of small cells, along with many advantages it provides, brings important mobility management problems such as frequent handover (HO), HO failure, HO delays, ping-pong HO and high energy consumption which will result in lower user experience and heavy signal loads. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study on the mobility management in 5G HetNet in terms of radio resource control, the initial access and registration procedure of the user equipment (UE) to the network, the paging procedure that provides the location of the UE within the network, connected mode mobility management schemes, beam level mobility and beam management. Besides, this paper addresses the challenges and suggest possible solutions for the 5G mobility management.

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A Comprehensive Survey on Mobility Management in 5G Heterogeneous Networks: Architectures, Challenges and Solutions

The emergence of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems has been seen as a potential solution for connecting remote areas where engineering terrestrial infrastructure is prohibitively expensive. Despite the hype, we still lack an open-source modeling framework for assessing the techno-economics of satellite broadband connectivity which is therefore the purpose of this paper. Firstly, a generalizable techno-economic model is presented to assess the engineering-economics of satellite constellations. Secondly, the approach is applied to assess the three main competing LEO constellations which include Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper. This involves simulating the impact on coverage, capacity and cost, as both the number of satellites and quantity of subscribers increases. Finally, a global assessment is undertaken visualizing the potential capacity and cost per user via different subscriber scenarios. The results demonstrate how limited the capacity will be once resources are spread across users in each satellite coverage area. For example, for 0.1 users per km2 (so 1 user per 10 km2), we estimate a mean per user capacity of 24.94 Mbps, 1.01 Mbps and 10.30 Mbps for Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper, respectively, in the busiest hour of the day. But if the subscriber density increases to 1 user per km2, then the mean per user capacity drops significantly to 2.49 Mbps, 0.10 Mbps and 1.02 Mbps. LEO broadband will be an essential part of the connectivity toolkit, but the results reveal that these mega-constellations will most likely have to operate below 0.1 users per km2 to provide a service that out-competes other broadband connectivity options.

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A Techno-Economic Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Assessing Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper

Providing connectivity to around half of the World population living in rural or underprivileged areas is a tremendous challenge, but also a unique opportunity. In this paper, a survey of technologies for providing connectivity to rural areas, and that can help address this challenge, is provided. Fronthaul and backhaul techniques are discussed. In addition, energy and cost efficiency of the studied technologies are analyzed. Typical application scenarios in rural areas are discussed, and several country-specific use cases are surveyed. Directions for future evolution of rural connectivity are outlined.

/pdf/a-key-6g-challenge-and-opportunity-connecting-the-remaining-4txiuvuaek.pdf

A Key 6G Challenge and Opportunity - Connecting the Remaining 4 Billions: A Survey on Rural Connectivity

Performance enhancement of the average spectral efficiency using an aperture averaging and spatial-coherence diversity based on the modified-PPM modulation for MISO FSO links

This article adopts a holistic approach to address the problem of poor broadband connectivity in rural areas by suggesting a novel wireless network architecture, also called the "Frugal 5G Network". To arrive at the Frugal 5G Network architecture, we take into consideration the rural connectivity needs and the characteristics specific to rural areas. As part of the proposed Frugal 5G Network, we define a heterogeneous Access Network wherein macro cells provide a carpet coverage while Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) provide additional capacity to serve the village clusters. WLAN is backhauled via a wireless network also called the wireless middle mile network. We define a Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) based architecture to make the network flexible and scalable. The concepts of Fog computing have also been employed in the network architecture to bring intelligence to the edge, i.e., to the access network. Through a novel amalgamation of these technologies, we are able to address the connectivity requirements of rural areas. The proposed network architecture can serve as a potential solution towards IEEE P2061, a standardization project that aims to design an architecture to facilitate rural broadband communication.

Connecting the Unconnected: Towards Frugal 5G Network Architecture and Standardization

In order to meet the increasing demands of high data rate and low latency cellular broadband applications, plans are underway to roll out the Fifth Generation (5G) cellular wireless system by the year 2020. This paper proposes a novel method for adapting the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)’s 5G architecture to the principles of Software Defined Networking (SDN). It relocates the control functionality present in the 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) to the network core, resulting in the conversion of the base station known as the gNB into a pure data plane node. This brings about a significant reduction in signaling costs between the RAN and the core network. It also results in improved system performance. The merits of our proposal have been illustrated by evaluating the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the 5G network, such as network attach (registration) time and handover time. We have also demonstrated improvements in attach time and system throughput due to the use of centralized algorithms for mobility management with the help of ns-3 simulations.

/pdf/a-centralized-sdn-architecture-for-the-5g-cellular-network-3kcd5zfllb.pdf

A Centralized SDN Architecture for the 5G Cellular Network

This article adopts a holistic approach to address the problem of poor broadband connectivity in rural areas by suggesting a novel wireless network architecture called "Frugal 5G Network." To arrive at the Frugal 5G Network architecture, we take into consideration rural connectivity needs and the characteristics specific to rural areas. As part of the proposed Frugal 5G Network, we define a heterogeneous access network wherein macrocells provide carpet coverage, while wireless local area networks (WLANs) provide additional capacity to serve village clusters. WLAN is backhauled via a wireless network also called the wireless middle mile network. We define software defined networking and network function virtualization based architecture to make the network flexible and scalable. The concepts of fog computing have also been employed in the network architecture to bring intelligence to the edge (i.e., to the access network). The proposed network architecture is developed independent of 3GPP 5G standards and can serve as a potential solution toward IEEE P2061, a standardization project that aims to design an architecture to facilitate rural broadband communication.

Connecting the Unconnected: Toward Frugal 5G Network Architecture and Standardization

In order to meet the increasing demands of high data rate and low latency cellular broadband applications, plans are underway to roll out the Fifth Generation (5G) cellular wireless system by the year 2020. This paper proposes a novel method for adapting the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)'s 5G architecture to the principles of Software Defined Networking (SDN). We propose to have centralized network functions in the 5G network core to control the network, end-to-end. This is achieved by relocating the control functionality present in the 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) to the network core, resulting in the conversion of the base station known as the gNB into a pure data plane node. This brings about a significant reduction in signaling costs between the RAN and the core network. It also results in improved system performance. The merits of our proposal have been illustrated by evaluating the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the 5G network, such as network attach (registration) time and handover time. We have also demonstrated improvements in attach time and system throughput due to the use of centralized algorithms for mobility management with the help of ns-3 simulations.

Multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs) co-exist within today's mobile broadband networks, and each of these RATs is controlled by a different set of entities, leading to fragmented network control. This may lead to sub-optimal utilization of the overall network resources. In this paper, we propose a novel Software Defined Networking (SDN) based network architecture for unified control of multiple RATs and provide a framework for improved network performance over those of the present-day architectures. The proposed architecture enables end-to-end network control while preserving scalability with the help of network slicing. We develop an evaluation platform based on network simulator-3 (ns-3) in accordance with the proposed architecture. We also demonstrate the performance improvements provided by the proposed architecture through simulations.

Pranav Jha

Papers

Connecting the Unconnected: Towards Frugal 5G Network Architecture and Standardization

A Centralized SDN Architecture for the 5G Cellular Network

Connecting the Unconnected: Toward Frugal 5G Network Architecture and Standardization

A Centralized SDN Architecture for the 5G Cellular Network

Control and Management of Multiple RATs in Wireless Networks: An SDN Approach