Wireless technologies for isolated rural communities in developing countries based on cellular 3G femtocell deployments

Acronym:    TUCAN3G
Code:    FP7-ICT-2011-9-601102
Funder:    European Commission
Start date:    2013 February 1st
End date:    2015 August 1st
Keywords:    Femtocell networks, self organising radio resource management, UMTS
Web site:    https://ict-tucan3g.upc.edu/
    
Partners:    Centro Regional de Productividad e Innovacion del Cauca, Fondo de Inversion en Telecomunicaciones, Fundacion EHAS, ip.access, KINNO Knowledge and Innovation Consultants, Telefonica del Peru, Telefonica International Wholesales Services, Universidad Catolica del Peru, Universidad del Cauca and Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
SPCOM Participants:    Adrian Agustin de Dios, Juan Fernández Rubio, Olga Muñoz Medina, Antonio Pascual Iserte, Javier Rubio López and Josep Vidal Manzano
SPCOM Responsible:    Josep Vidal Manzano

Summary

Recent years have witnessed a massive penetration of cellular telephony in developing countries. However, isolated rural areas (inhabited by low-income population) have generally been disregarded because classical access and backhaul technologies do not assure the return on investment. As communication is crucial in human development, finding innovative solutions to connect these areas is an utmost necessity. TUCAN3G proposes to study, from the twofold technological and socio-economical perspectives, the progressive introduction of mobile telephony and data services in isolated rural areas of developing countries, by taking advantage of new wireless technologies for the access network (based on 3G femtocells, and its evolution to 4G) in outdoor scenarios, as well as WiLD (WiFi for Long Distances)-WiMAX-VSAT heterogeneous backhauling. Those promise to be key in the development of inexpensive, sustainable, energy efficient, self-organized and long-term self-sufficient solutions that result in a profitable business case. The project also proposes the installation of a demonstration platform in the Peruvian jungle to verify the solution, enable the verification of business model hypothesis and results, and serve as a general showcase.

 More project information: http://futur.upc.edu/11580085

Journal publications

[1] J. Rubio, A. Pascual Iserte, J Del Olmo and J. Vidal, "User Association Strategies in HetNets Leading to Rate Balancing under Energy Constraints", EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, Vol. 2017, No. 204, December 2017, pp. 1 - 20.

[2] J. Rubio, J Del Olmo, A. Pascual Iserte, J. Vidal, O. Muñoz Medina and A. Agustin de Dios, "Network Dimensioning and Base Station On/Off Switching Strategies for Sustainable Deployments in Remote Areas", EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, November 2017.

[3] Andrés Martínez-Fernández, J. Vidal, Javier Simó-Reigadas, Ignacio Prieto-Egido, A. Agustin de Dios, Juan Paco and Álvaro Rendón, "The TUCAN3G Project: Wireless Technologies for Isolated Rural Communities in Developing Countries Based on 3G Small Cell Deployments", IEEE Communications Magazine, No. 7, July 2016, pp. 1 - 9.

[4] J. Rubio, O. Muñoz Medina and A. Pascual Iserte, "A Stochastic Approach for Resource Allocation with Backhaul and Energy Harvesting Constraints", IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 65, No. 7, July 2016, pp. 5788 - 5797.

Conference publications

[1] J. Rubio, O. Muñoz Medina, A. Pascual Iserte and J. Vidal, "Stochastic Resource Allocation with a Backhaul Constraint for the Uplink", IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, September 2016.

[2] J. Rubio, A. Pascual Iserte and J. Vidal, "Base Station On/Off Strategies for Wireless Networks Powered with Energy Harvesting Sources", Joint Newcom/COST Workshop on Wireless Communications, October 2015.

[3] A. Agustin de Dios, S. Lagén and J. Vidal, "Energy Efficient Cell Load-aware Coverage Optimization for Small-Cell Networks", IEEE International Conference on Communications, June 2015.

[4] J. Rubio, A. Pascual Iserte, J Del Olmo and J. Vidal, "User Association for Load Balancing in Heterogeneous Networks Powered with Energy Harvesting Sources", IEEE Global Communications Conference, December 2014.

[5] J. Rubio, A. Pascual Iserte, J Del Olmo and J. Vidal, "Dynamic Base Station Switch On/Off Strategies for Sustainable Wireless Networks", IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances for Wireless Communications, June 2014.

[6] J. Del Olmo, A. Pascual Iserte, J. Vidal, O. Muñoz Medina and A. Agustin de Dios, "Three-G Access Network Dimensioning in Isolated Rural Areas Based on Femtocells", European Conference on Networks and Communications, June 2014, pp. 1 - 5.