In telecommunications, network service accessibility as a requirement is closely related to equitably serving the population residing at locations that can most appropriately be described as remote. Remote connectivity, however, would have benefited from a more inclusive consideration in the existing generations of mobile communications. To remedy this, sustainability and its social impact are being positioned as key drivers of sixth generation's (6G) research and standardization activities. In particular, there has been a conscious attempt to understand the demands of remote wireless connectivity, which has led to a better understanding of the challenges that lie ahead. In this perspective, this article overviews the key challenges associated with constraints on network design and deployment to be addressed for providing broadband connectivity to rural areas, and proposes novel approaches and solutions for bridging the digital divide in those regions.
@article{arxiv.2009.04175,
title = {6G for Bridging the Digital Divide: Wireless Connectivity to Remote Areas},
author = {Abdelaali Chaoub and Marco Giordani and Brejesh Lall and Vimal Bhatia and Adrian Kliks and Luciano Mendes and Khaled Rabie and Harri Saarnisaari and Amit Singhal and Nan Zhang and Sudhir Dixit and Michele Zorzi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.04175},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
This paper has been accepted for publication in IEEE Wireless Communications. 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table