Alternative Backhaul link for Community Cellular Network in Rural Coastal Areas

This paper presents an alternative backhaul link using relay buoy to provide low-cost, sustainable, and broadband connectivity for community cellular networks (CCN) residing in coastal areas. The proposed solution attempts to address the high operational cost of CCN due to monthly subscription cost of VSAT which is used to connect the network to the global internet. Due to geographic conditions of these coastal communities, terrestrial solutions such as land-based wireless repeaters and fiber cables may not be suitable for small-scale networks such as CCN. Relay buoy on the other hand which has line-of-sight (LOS) paths to these coastal communities and possibly to an internet service provider (ISP), can be placed in the coastal waters and serves as backhaul link. It uses low-cost, off-the-shelf, and high bandwidth 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radios and highly directive antennas. However, establishing a communication system in maritime environment has its own challenges which must be considered in the design of the relay buoy system. Furthermore, radio planning using radio propagation simulation tool and high-resolution digital elevation maps were used to determine the optimum location of the relay buoy. Given the derived location, 3-ray path loss analysis was applied to evaluate the impact of variation in evaporation duct height, and antenna height. The feasibility of such system was successfully demonstrated and evaluated through various wireless tests conducted. The proposed solution could enable not only the backhaul of CCN but also other applications such as weather sensor gateway, emergency warning system, and wireless access for different fishing activities.