Feasibility study of LTE middle-mile networks in TV White Spaces for rural India

With an intention to provide robust broadband connection to rural areas, Government of India is laying out optical fiber cables across the country connecting the rural offices (named Gram Panchayat) under the initiative BharatNet. This work explores the feasibility of implementing a middle-mile network from these Gram Panchayats to the nearby villages, where wireless clusters will be set up, using LTE-Advanced over TV White Spaces owing to excellent propagation characteristics of the frequencies in TV UHF band. A proportionally fair radio resource allocation over the middle-mile network is proposed that uses Coordinated Multipoint Technology offered by Long Term Evolution — Advanced (LTE-A) which satisfies the broadband requirement. The simulation results have shown that for a cell radius of Coordination Region below 5 km, a rate of 1 Mbps per end-user for rural population density of India is achievable, which is more than the 512 Kbps target rate prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).