Exploring High Tower Base Stations with Multi-User Massive MIMO for Rural Connectivity

The digital divide is a key issue worldwide. Almost 3 billion people, mainly in rural areas, are still not connected. In this paper, we explore the capability of high towers base station (HTBS) with massive multiple input multiple output (mMIMO) in offering low-cost rural connectivity. We previously showed the benefits of HTBS in the downlink. We focus in this work on the uplink (UL) where we compute the UL data rate per user for different values of transmit effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP). Our results show that the HTBS solution is viable as relatively good user UL rates are achieved with reasonable EIRPs. This is of high interest for covering rural areas, characterized by low population densities and a low number of active users, as the coverage is their main constraint, rather than the capacity as in urban areas. Techno-economical aspects such as the recommended frequency for HTBS, the number of covered persons, the average population density of covered rural areas, and potential low-cost locations for HTBS are provided. Non-technological challenges for the HTBS solution are also discussed.