Rural Wireless Mesh Networking in Africa: An experiential study

Jonathan Backens, Min Song, Lutz Engels

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Connecting the rural communities of the developing world remains a huge task in both the areas of adequate technology and local implementation. With widely varying topography and demographics, rural communities provide a unique challenge in connectivity that wireless communication seems destined to meet. Specifically the ubiquitous nature of wireless mesh networks (WMN) presents a theoretically plausible solution to these varying difficulties. There has been a growing interest in these unique challenges with several recent research publications on long distance links in WMN, channel allocation schemes and performance. However the current analysis and simulation based research that is the focus in most technical literature lacks the proof of concept that comes from an actual implementation. Therefore a novel approach to rural wireless connectivity is presented from an actual test case in the rural village of Macha, Zambia. Its indoor to indoor mesh network follows a realistic deployment instead of planned logical deployment strategy yet is highly functional. Areas of research arising from an actual implementation are presented with performance results of the resulting network presented.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication24th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications 2009, CATA 2009
Pages128-133
Number of pages6
StatePublished - 2009
Event24th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications 2009, CATA 2009 - New Orleans, LA, United States
Duration: 8 Apr 200910 Apr 2009

Publication series

Name24th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications 2009, CATA 2009

Conference

Conference24th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications 2009, CATA 2009
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Orleans, LA
Period8/04/0910/04/09

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