Rural Broadband Access via Clustered Collaborative Communication

Traditional broadband solutions are often economically and technically infeasible in rural regions due to sparse populations, high infrastructure costs, and energy inefficiencies. This makes rural broadband access a critical challenge, particularly in developing countries where socio-economic disparities and geographical barriers exacerbate the digital divide. This paper proposes an innovative cluster-based network architecture to address such challenges by leveraging low-power Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) and underutilized television white space (TVWS) frequencies. The proposed system forms collaborative clusters of CPEs that use distributed beamforming (DBF) for transmitting data to a central Point of Presence (PoP) Base Station. This approach reduces the need for extensive infrastructure and high-power transmissions, offering a cost-effective and energy-efficient solution. A two-tier uplink access protocol is introduced to optimize data transmission, ensuring scalability and reliability as rural populations grow. By addressing the unique challenges of rural connectivity, this study provides a viable pathway for expanding internet access, enabling socio-economic growth, and bridging the digital divide in underserved communities. Key contributions include dynamic clustering algorithms, scalability enhancements, and a comprehensive performance evaluation, offering a transformative model for rural broadband deployment. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed architecture is up to 20% more energy efficient with significantly improved throughput compared to conventional rural broadband access schemes.