Wireless Mesh Networks: a technology for community-deployed networks in developing countries (Extended Abstract)

Marvin S nchez G. a
Program UNI/Asdi/SAREC/FEC, Universidad Nac. de Ingenieira (UNI), Managua, Nicaragua. Email: marvins@ieee.org

Oscar Somarriba J.
Program UNI/Asdi/SAREC/FEC, Universidad Nac. de Ingenieira (UNI), Managua, Nicaragua. Email: oscar.somarriba@uni.edu.ni

Jens Zander
Dept of Communication Systems, Royal Inst of Technology (KTH), Electrum 418, 164 40 Kista, Sweden. Email: jens.zander@radio.kth.se

I. I NTRODUCTION Since 1990s important policy reforms has been done by countries of Central America. The reforms have fostered private sector investment in telecommunication services and infrastructure providing benets to their citizens who now, at least in urban areas, have access to several telecommunication services. However, although we have observed tremendous growth in infrastructure and services (voice and data), it seems to be economically difcult to extend these benets to rural areas without the nancial support of the government [1]. So far, the rural areas far from the main cities have been unattractive to private investors due to low population density, long distance, and usually irregular terrain together with low incomes of potential users. In particular, this problem continues to be a challenge to the governments of developing countries, whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the digital divide. In countries with so many needs, one may think that investment in telecommunications might have low priority level. However, for instance the Nicaraguan government recognizes that the development of and access to telecommunication means is a key enabler [2] in promoting job creation, knowledge-based growth, business innovation, access to valuable information, and can be utilized to improve education and health-care assistance. Fig.1 shows the general vision of the Regulator of Nicaragua (TELCOR). To guaranty universal access to telecommunications to all citizens of the country requires reducing what is called by the regulator the market efciency gap and the real access gap (aimed to be nanced by the Telecommunication funds called, FITEL by its name in spanish). In this context wireless mesh networks are an appealing technology to provide rural area communication. The used of this technology could inuence important changes to the current mechanisms used regarding the nancial support done by governments . By taking advantage of the self-organizing capability of mesh networks the communities themselves or even new potential local players can take an active part

Fig. 1. The general vision of the Nicaraguan Regulator regarding universal access (version of the original written in spanish, www.telcor.gob.ni).

in the solution to their own needs of telecommunications. However, even in the foreseen scenario where potential users are assumed to be xed, urge the availability of easy-to-use and free-of-charge tools for network planning and capacity estimation as the one presented in this paper. Recent work on this area have make used of simulation tools to analyze the performance in mesh networks like the one in [3] and [4], however their work has focus on the performance analysis and testbed rather than a common frame work to facilitate community network planning. The general contribution of our work is on providing a general methodology of planning for community-deployed mesh networks making used of the free software called Radio mobile that incoporate topographical information (with free available cartography) combined with the use google earth. Using this tools we will present an approach that could be used for the network deployment and we will present a methodology for capacity evaluation. The capacity is described by the maximum end-to-end transmission

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Fig. 2.

Rural communities of Nicaragua for case study (120km 80km)

rate (throughput) provided to each node that composes the network. II. S YSTEM M ODELS AND M ETHODOLOGY We will present as an illustrative example the depoyment scenario for Internet access for 13 sites in rural communities of Nicaragua (telecenter candidate sites provided by the Project Coordination Unit (UCP) of the regulatory body of Nicaragua, TELCOR). The communities are located in the north central highlands region of the country, at the departments of Estel, Madriz and Nueva Segovia. Fig. 2 shows the geographical locations for the communities of interest utilizing a digital map of the terrain. For low-cost user-deployment we consider the following: Share internet access: for low-cost internet service (network service recurrent cost) nodes share access provider. Economy of scale: Two cases are considered 1) Utilization of radio equipment parameters on the 2.4GHz frequency bands (WiFi physical layer). Similar rules to the FCC part 15 have been adopted in Nicaragua throug the rules in AA001-2006 [5]. 2) Utilization of radio equipment parameters for WiMax technologies on 3.4GHz frequency band. This bands have been allocated in Nicaragua for Broadband Wireless access technologies (Primary usage). We follow a similar approach to the one presented by the authors in [6] but also considering the use of mesh networking with parameters for WiMax technologies like the one utilized in [4]. A. Capacity Evaluation Example To share common Internet access points in a mesh conguration we assume asymmetric trafc demand from each node to a gateway node connected to the internet and viceversa. Under this assumption the average trafc from node i to the internet gateway, node g, is dened as g and from the gateway i to node i as i , hence the total network trafc load is given g by:

We assume that the average trafc from a node to the internet is 10% of the trafc from the internet to that node. This is a reasonable assumption if for instance the gateway is connected via an ADSL service over the PSTN and we share this connection providing similar capacity to all telecenters. The community-deployed scenario is analyzed estimating the radio propagation environment of located nodes. The pathlosses in the network are derived utilizing the digital map GTOPO30 with the Longley-Rice model [7] as implemented by the Radio Mobile freeware program by VE2DBE [8]. Next, we roughly estimate from the link budgets what data rates can be achieved with or without directional antennas. The (upper-bound) capacity resulting from a communitydeployed approach is evaluated by founding the link transmission schedule applying nonlinear optimization [1], [9]. III. D ISCUSSIONS In this paper we presented a methodology to utilize freeavailable tools that can be used for community-planning of mesh networking. The evaluation results shown by an example of planning and capacity evaluation in rural communities of Nicaragua demonstrate that mesh networking is an appealing technology to allow that the community themselves or even new potential players take active part in the solution to their own needs. This work also shows the need to develop easy-touse free-software tools coupled with mesh network products to make the community deployment of mesh networks ubiquitous. R EFERENCES
[1] M. S. G., Wireless Multihop Networks with Advanced Antenna SystemsAn Alternative for Rural Communication, PhD Thesis, Dept of Communication Systems, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 418, 164 40 Kista, Sweden., May 2008. [2] (2007, Nov.) Fondo de Inversi n de Telecomunicaciones (FITEL) . o [Online]. Available: http://www.telcor.gob.ni/Desplegar.asp?PAG ID=15 [3] J. Ishmael, S. Bury, D. Pezaros, and N. Race, Deploying Rural Community Wireless Mesh Networks, Internet Computing, IEEE, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 2229, 2008. [Online]. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2008.76 [4] M. Marques, J. Ambrosio, C. Reis, J. Riscado, D. Robalo, F. J. Velez, and R. Costa, Design and Planning of IEEE 802.16 Networks, in The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC07). IEEE, 2007. [5] (2006, Jan.) AA 001-2006, Wireless Access System Operation on the Frequency Bands: 900 MHZ, 2.4 GHZ, and 5 GHZ. Instituto Nicarag ense u de Telecomunicaciones y Correos (TELCOR). In Spanish. [Online]. Available: http://www.telcor.gob.ni/Descargar.asp?DOC ID=42024 [6] M. S nchez G., O. Somarriba, and J. Zander, User-deployed and a Capacity Evaluation of Multihop Wireless Networks: A Case Study for Nicaragua, in the 8th Scandinavian Workshop on Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (ADHOC08), Stockholm, Sweden, May 2008. [7] G.A. Hufford, A.G. Longley, W.A. Kissick, A Guide to the Use of the ITS Irregular Terrain Model in the Area Prediction Mode, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Report 82100, Apr. 1982. [8] (2008) Radio Mobile Freeware by VE2DBE. [Online]. Available: http://www.cplus.org/rmw/english1.html [9] M. Johansson and L. Xiao, Cross-Layer Optimization of Wireless Networks Using Nonlinear Column Generation, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 435444, Feb. 2006.