Integrated Access and Backhaul based 5G Connectivity for Rural Indian Sectors– Ending the Digital Divide

Abstract

The world is heading towards deployment of 5G commercially by the year 2020. But providing broadband 5G connectivity to remote rural regions is a significant challenge. Fiber connectivity has attempted to penetrate rural regions but last mile connectivity is still a problem in many rural sectors due to improper land demarcation and hostile terrain. A scheme which is based on the Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) concept is proposed to provide last mile 5G connectivity to satisfy the broadband needs of rural subscribers. A wireless 5G downlink environment following 3GPP NR specifications with a significantly high throughput is simulated. The last mile link is provided through a 28GHz carrier from a proposed IAB node delivering a data throughput of 4.301 Gbps for singleuser carrier aggregation and 5.733 Gbps for multi-user carrier aggregation which is quite promising for broadband service, like high-speed Internet and streaming video. The results presented in this work are observed to agree favourably with the results of other researchers in the field.

Keywords

• carrier aggregation (ca)
• component carrier (cc)
• 5g
• new radio (nr)
• integrated access and backhaul (iab)