A Key 6G Challenge and Opportunity - Connecting the Base of the Pyramid: A Survey on Rural Connectivity

Abstract

Providing connectivity to around half of the world population living in rural or underprivileged areas is a tremendous challenge, but also a unique opportunity. Access to the internet would provide the population living in these areas a possibility to progress on the educational, health, environment, and business levels. In this paper, a survey of technologies for providing connectivity to rural areas, and that can help address this challenge, is provided. Although access/fronthaul and backhaul techniques are discussed in the paper, it is noted that the major limitation for providing connectivity to rural and underprivileged areas is the cost of backhaul deployment. In addition, energy requirements and cost efficiency of the studied technologies are analyzed. In fact, the challenges faced for deploying an electricity network, as a prerequisite for deploying communication networks, are huge in these areas and they are granted an important share of the discussions in this paper. Furthermore, typical application scenarios in rural areas are discussed, and several country-specific use cases are surveyed. The main initiatives by key international players aiming to provide rural connectivity are also described. Moreover, directions for future evolution of rural connectivity are outlined in the paper. Although there is no single solution that can solve all rural connectivity problems, building gradually on the current achievements in order to reach ubiquitous connectivity, while taking into account the particularities of each region and tailoring the solution accordingly, seems to be the most suitable path to follow.

ISOBlue HD: An Open-Source Platform for Collecting Context-Rich Agricultural Machinery Datasets

“…Meanwhile, the platform experienced inconsistent Internet access, which caused delayed data streaming and failed remote login attempts on multiple occasions. Although sporadic network access is a common problem in rural areas [ 73 ], an intelligent data streaming policy needs to be implemented to batch data during sub-optimal network conditions and send data opportunistically whenever the network becomes available. Moreover, although the Kafka cluster performed well for storing data, it was cumbersome to fetch data from the cluster during post-processing, as the logs could not be queried like a traditional database.…”

6G Ecosystem: Current Status and Future Perspective

“…At a little lower altitude than satellites, UAVs functions as either mobile base stations while being afloat in space to cover a large footprint of terrestrial mobile users or act as relays (hotspots) to extend the coverage of base stations where the mobile infrastructure is hard to setup and thereby serve a greater number of users [18]. One of the foreseen applications of UAV communication in 6G networks will be to provide rural connectivity at a reduced cost [76,151]. Features of UAV communication: Easy deployment and network setup are critical features of UAV to enable flexible range extension or coverage enhancement of wireless communication.…”

Softwarization of UAV Networks: A Survey of Applications and Future Trends

“…(×) indicates that no simulation tools and testbeds are used. assistance can be achieved by deploying UAVs to provide connectivity to areas with insufficient infrastructure or suffering from disaster events [329]. Moreover, the assistance of satellites to such systems will be essential for 6G mobile networks [330].…”