VillageCell: cost effective cellular connectivity in rural areas

  • Authors:

  • Abhinav Anand;Veljko Pejovic;Elizabeth M. Belding;David L. Johnson

  • Affiliations:

  • University of California, Santa Barbara, CA;University of California, Santa Barbara, CA;University of California, Santa Barbara, CA;University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Mobile telephony brings clear economic and social benefits to its users. As handsets have become more affordable, ownership has reached staggering numbers, even in the most remote areas of the world. However, network coverage is often lacking in low population densities and low income rural areas of the developing world, where big telecoms often defer from deploying expensive infrastructure. To solve this coverage gap, we propose VillageCell, a low-cost alternative to high-end cell phone networks. VillageCell relies on software defined radios and open-source solutions to provide free local and cheap long-distance communication for remote regions. Our architecture is simple and easy to deploy, yet robust and requires no modification to GSM handsets. Through measuring the call quality metrics and the system capacity under a realistic rural-area network load, we show that VillageCell is indeed an attractive solution for rural area voice connectivity.