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INFORMATION
WiMAX – Wireless broadband access in rural areas
Future Internet for All!
Today broadband internet access is often
regarded as a social and strategic factor for
enterprises and private households, as well
as for the medical and the educational sector.
However, there still is a digital divide between
urban and rural areas regarding a basic availability
of broadband internet access. The impli-
Motivation
At present, only urban areas of the European Union have
guaranteed access and a comprehensive coverage of broadband.
In most rural areas, where more than 25 percent of
all European citizens live, broadband coverage is disproportionately
inadequate. Consequently, 40 million private
households and enterprise users do not have a satisfying
access regarding modern internet-based applications.
Challenges
The digital divide between urban and rural areas is mainly
caused by economic constraints, due to the fact that the
development and implementation of wired broadband
networks in rural areas is very cost intensive and often
cannot be amortized in an acceptable period of time. The
solution to this problem is the implementation of hybrid
broadband access networks, a combination of wired and
wireless broadband access technologies by one network
carrier. The limiting factors are the cost for both the investment
and the network operations.
Research Highlights
Today, the most promising wireless broadband access technology
is IEEE 802.16, also known as WiMAX (Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Access). Within this project
the mobile enhancement of WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) were
analyzed with respect to its technological capacity and
FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM L3S L3S RESEARCH CENTER
cation is that more than a quarter of all Europeans
do not have a satisfying access to current
and future internet-based applications. Driven
by this disparity, the project focuses on the
usage of Mobile WiMAX as a wireless enhancement
in order to form economic hybrid broadband
networks.
The main results of this project have shown
that there are efficient approaches available to
establish economic, broadband access for future
internet applications in rural areas. The recommended
solution is the implementation of hybrid
broadband networks, which contain both wired
and wireless access networks for the last mile
delivery. The project was managed by the L3S
Research Center and executed with researches
of the Leibniz universität Hannover and the Tu
Braunschweig.
investment requirements and operation.
The project emphasizes the following tasks:
• Performance analysis
• Network dimensioning and simulation
• Profitability analysis
The media applications and the user behavior define the
basic requirements for a wireless broadband access network.
Taking this into account, several factors were evaluated:
first, the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of
classical internet applications such as e-mail or file transfer;
second, future internet real-time applications, such as
Unified Communications, were also evaluated. Following,
this theoretical performance analysis, the distribution of
different user groups within the target area were statis-