WiFiRe: rural area broadband access using the WiFi PHY and a multisector TDD MAC

Abstract

The needs of Indian rural telecom, and the economics of currently available broadband access technologies, motivate a new system for rural broadband access, which we call WiFiRe (WiFi Rural Extension). The system leverages the widely available, and highly cost-reduced, WiFi chipsets. We, however, retain only the PHY from these chipsets and propose a singlechannel, multisector, TDD MAC using directional antennas. The proposed WiFiRe MAC is similar to the WiMAX MAC in several respects. In this article we motivate our approach, describe the system architecture and the MAC, analyse the spatial reuse, and then, using a simple scheduler, provide an assessment of the voice and data capacity of a WiFiRe system.

Spectrum Detection and Link Quality Assessment for Heterogeneous Shared Access Networks

“…1. We formulate a general dynamic state-space model (DSM) for the considered TDD scenario [26], in which only one incumbent/PU may be active in each time slot. We assume the links quality change dynamically with time.…”

“…We consider an indoor small cell network and assume multiple PUs of a small cell communication with each other on specific spectrum band [7], by using a TDD mode [26]. For the considered scenarios [27], the TDD mode allows for the flexible UL/DL timeslot allocation.…”

2011-2012 sponsors of the Telecommunications Journal of Australia

“…These include wireless local loop (Momtahan 2001;Nedevschi 2007), wireless local area network (Zhang 2004;Raman 2007;Paul 2007), wireless metropolitan area network (Hincapie 2007;Giuliano 2008), and more recently wireless regional area network (Liang 2008). However, the bandwidth efficiency achieved by those technologies is typically limited to less than 5 bits/s/Hz.…”

Optimal scheduling and power control for tdma based point to multipoint wireless networks

“…Given the sparse distribution of potential users in rural areas, WiFi has been modified by 2P [11] and WiLDNet [9] to work in medium-to long-distance point-to-point settings. Additionally, there is ongoing work such as SRAWAN [12] and WiFiRe [10] that are modifying WiFi to be higher performing in medium-to long-distance point-to-multipoint settings as well. Another promising technology in this context is IEEE 802.16 [6] (WiMAX), providing medium-range pointto-multipoint connectivity in denser urban areas.…”