This is the limited offline version of the Internet for the rural communities but what we need is the local-first version of the Internet for the rural community [1].
Fun facts, about one third or 2.6 Billions of the world's population has no or very limited Internet connectivity [2]. The main root cause is most probably power not the infrastructure.
Most of the people in authority probably don't realize that this rural connectivity does not need a fast high speed network as long as it has connectivity. It can be slow as kbps bandwidth, a kind of "sipping" Bittorent based download, but a download nonetheless.
The main problem of the Internet connectivity it's not really the infrastructure itself but the overall power budget requirements for the connectivity infrastructure.
We need to bring back the very efficient wireles modulation for the remote and rural Internet as exemplify by the DMR with its very efficient 4-FSK [3],[4]. This type of wireless modulation employed constant envelope modulation that is far more efficient (8 to 15 times more efficient) than the alternative TETRA with comparable bandwith [5]. It's reported that DMR operates on 1 kWh per day while TETRA is on 15 kWh per day thus the former can be sustained by only solar panels but not the latter.
Please note that TETRA itself is not a very efficient modulation with π⁄4 differential quadrature phase-shift keying (π⁄4-DPSK) since it requires linear amplifiers due to its non-constant envelope wireles modulation. It's even worst for typical OFDM based system (e.g Wi-Fi HaLoW, LTE, 5G, etc) [6]. This is because a similar power budget setup to DMR would have required probably around 100 times more power or more than 100 kWh per day including the air-conditioning systems for the linear power amplifier systems [7].
Thus these remote and rural base stations can be potentially powered by merely solar panels and the infrastructure does not need to be expensive since the base station structure can be made from bamboo [8].
[1] Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud:
Fun facts, about one third or 2.6 Billions of the world's population has no or very limited Internet connectivity [2]. The main root cause is most probably power not the infrastructure.
Most of the people in authority probably don't realize that this rural connectivity does not need a fast high speed network as long as it has connectivity. It can be slow as kbps bandwidth, a kind of "sipping" Bittorent based download, but a download nonetheless.
The main problem of the Internet connectivity it's not really the infrastructure itself but the overall power budget requirements for the connectivity infrastructure.
We need to bring back the very efficient wireles modulation for the remote and rural Internet as exemplify by the DMR with its very efficient 4-FSK [3],[4]. This type of wireless modulation employed constant envelope modulation that is far more efficient (8 to 15 times more efficient) than the alternative TETRA with comparable bandwith [5]. It's reported that DMR operates on 1 kWh per day while TETRA is on 15 kWh per day thus the former can be sustained by only solar panels but not the latter.
Please note that TETRA itself is not a very efficient modulation with π⁄4 differential quadrature phase-shift keying (π⁄4-DPSK) since it requires linear amplifiers due to its non-constant envelope wireles modulation. It's even worst for typical OFDM based system (e.g Wi-Fi HaLoW, LTE, 5G, etc) [6]. This is because a similar power budget setup to DMR would have required probably around 100 times more power or more than 100 kWh per day including the air-conditioning systems for the linear power amplifier systems [7].
Thus these remote and rural base stations can be potentially powered by merely solar panels and the infrastructure does not need to be expensive since the base station structure can be made from bamboo [8].
[1] Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud:
https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/
[2] About one-third of the global population, or 2.6 billion people, remain offline.
https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2023-09-12-unive...
[3] Digital mobile radio (DMR):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio
[4] DMR networks for health emergency management: A case study:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220761899_DMR_netwo...
[5] TETRA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TETRA
[6] Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_...
[7] Base Station ON-OFF Switching in 5G Wireless Networks: Approaches and Challenges:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315696556_Base_Stat...
[8] IEEE Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) 2022 Challenge Winners:
https://ctu.ieee.org/challenge/2022-ctu-challenge-2/