A Radio over Fiber based Wireless Access Network Architecture for Rural Areas

Recently, “wireless last mile” has received considerable attention since it requires much less infrastructure compared to wireline alternatives such as xDSL and cable modem networks, resulting in a cost-effective solution to the Internet access. However, to date most of the considerations has been focused on densely populated urban areas although broadband service demand in sparsely populated rural areas is continuously increasing. Traffic demand per unit area in such areas is much lower compared to urban areas, but a number of base stations will be required to cover broad areas. In this paper, we propose a radio over fiber based broadband wireless access network architecture for rural areas. It utilizes wavelength division multiplexing for dynamic bandwidth allocation among base stations on demand basis. Characteristics of the architecture, access protocol, and scheduling are discussed. Moreover, a capacity analysis is performed to see the properties of the architecture. keywords– wireless access network, radio over fiber, wavelength division multiplexing