Enhancement of Rural Connectivity by Recycling TV Towers with Massive MIMO Techniques

Autor: Falou, Ammar El, Alouini, Mohamed-Slim
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
Popis: Nowadays, the digital divide is one of the major issues facing the global community. Around 3 billion people worldwide are still not-connected or under-connected. In this article, we investigate the use of TV towers with multi user (MU) massive multiple input multiple output (mMIMO) techniques to offer connectivity in rural areas. Specifically, the coverage range is assessed for a MU mMIMO base station (BS) mounted on a high tower as a TV tower, and compared with a legacy mMIMO BS. The obtained results show that one high tower BS can cover an area at least 25 times larger than the area covered by a legacy BS. This is of high interest as recycling TV towers can enhance the rural connectivity with low expenditures. We apply the proposed solution to a realistic case study in an Ethiopian rural area, based on population densities and locations of current BS and TV towers. Our study shows that a high number of people can be covered by existing TV towers. Additional possible solutions to enhance rural connectivity are discussed in the last section.
Comment: 7 pages, submitted to IEEE Communications Magazine (June 2022), 1st revision (October 2022), 2nd revision (November 2022)
Databáze: arXiv