Improving Rural Broadband

Creating a foundational data acceleration component for rural broadband solutions

Broadband is central to our economy and daily life, but rural areas face challenges in achieving reliable connectivity through wireless networks. This project, titled “Liquid Wireless Networking for Data-Intensive Rural Apps,” is creating a new framework to support real-time data-intensive rural applications in the presence of complex, fast-varying network dynamics and uncertainties. The framework, called Real-Time Liquid Wireless Networking (RT-LWN), is expected to become a foundational component for rural broadband solutions.

---

The Problem

Data-intensive applications such as agriculture automation and immersive online education are expected to have a transformative impact on rural industries and communities. However, rural wireless is subject to environmental factors such as weather, terrain, foliage, and crop types and densities, and spatiotemporal uncertainties also pose challenges for rural wireless links.

---

How We’re Addressing It

The RT-LWN framework overcomes these issues by integrating fountain-encoded liquid data with the design of predictable wireless networking. This novel wireless network architecture features:

• Novel, effective integration of the liquid transport layer into endpoints,
• Functional decomposition across the liquid transport layer and lower layers based on the end-to-end principle, and
• Field-deployable, holistic designs for addressing complex, fast-varying wireless dynamics and uncertainties.

RT-LWN encodes application data using fountain codes and then delivers data across rRANs and rHauls with per-packet probabilistic real-time guarantees. The liquidity of fountain-encoded data, together with a field-deployable approach to predictable per packet probabilistic real-time communication guarantee across wireless access and backhaul, enables efficient, real-time delivery of each source block while fully leveraging the aggregate capacity of heterogeneous wireless networks in the presence of fast-varying dynamics and uncertainties.

With predictable control of communication reliability, timeliness, and throughput at the link, network, and liquid transport layers, RT-LWN enables “predictability by design” and tackles the resiliency and performance challenges of rural wireless at the same time.

Project Team

Outcomes

About