NetSE:Medium:VillageNet: Intelligent Wireless Networks for Rural Areas

NetSE:Medium:VillageNet：农村地区智能无线网络

• 批准号: 1064821
• 负责人: Elizabeth Belding
• 金额: $ 119.91万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1064821&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NetSE; Medium; VillageNet; Intelligent; Wireless

Access to communication plays a pivotal role in the socio-economic development of any nation. While the Internet has revolutionized the development of economic, social, financial and educational sectors of the industrialized world, it has also created a 'digital divide' that separates the affluent and developed nations from the developing and under-developed regions of the world. Significant progress has been made in bridging this digital divide by bringing Internet connectivity to rural regions through Internet kiosks and cafes whereby citizens travel, often by foot, to these central areas in order to access the Internet. While clearly Internet access through this model is much better than no access at all, these public terminals are not a satisfactory end solution due to long travel distances from homes, limited hours of availability, high usage costs, and long wait times.The goal of this research is to extend Internet connectivity from the point where it is brought into the community by a long distance link (i.e., satellite, long range WiFi, etc.), to provide coverage throughout the village such that residents have Internet access in their homes, offices, schools and public buildings. The research consists of an ambitious, integrated set of research projects that provides Internet connectivity throughout a village in a developing region. The work differs from, and is complementary to, prior work on rural wireless networks in that the focus is, not on the long-distance links that connect the local network to the Internet, but on the development of solutions that provide widespread, local coverage across a geographically dispersed community for currently available end devices. Working in partnership with rural Zambians, a network architecture will be developed that greatly enhances Internet access in rural Africa and elsewhere. This work makes several key contributions:- To provide widespread connectivity across a geographically dispersed rural community, a customized cross-layer protocol stack for the white spaces spectrum will be developed. This stack includes an integrated PHY/MAC layer, called a transmission layer, that jointly considers interference properties, energy constraints and application requirements to select transmission parameters and channel access strategies to most efficiently utilize available spectrum. - To minimize impact on already congested Internet gateway links, a novel network architecture and supporting application, called VillageShare, will be designed to isolate local network traffic: traffic that originates and ends within the local community network completely avoids the gateway link. As discovered in preliminary work, unnecessary transmissions on the gateway link constitute a catastrophic problem for rural communities and lead to aborted sessions, dropped connections, and poor end user experience.- To decrease connectivity cost and provide Internet access to users without home computers, this work will develop VillageCell, a low-cost femtocell-inspired system that provides off-the-shelf cellular phones with free local Internet, voice and chat access utilizing the white spaces network as a backbone.- To evaluate the efficacy of the work and influence the solution design, a qualitative ethnographic study of ICT in the community of Macha, Zambia, will be conducted through cooperation with partner institutions. The study will explore the social, cultural and economic impacts of developed solutions, and ensure solutions are designed in partnership with rural Zambians.- To demonstrate the benefits of our integrated system, we develop RemoteMath, an SMS/voice-based mathematics tutoring system through which students can obtain after school assistance on math homework.Broader Impact. The work from this award will have far-reaching impact by expanding the utility of Internet access in developing regions. Prior research clearly indicates the vast economic, social and educational benefits of Internet connectivity in a rural community. Through the principal investigators' (PIs) partnership with two African organizations, the work will directly impact local Africans through the development and deployment of technology that solves complex technological problems while enabling practical, deployable solutions. Locally, the immediate impact of this work is the education of undergraduate and graduate students about the vast potential for societal impact of computer science research. The PIs will leverage their participation in the UCSB Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) to create an interdisciplinary course on technology for developing regions. In a time when CS enrollments are shrinking, the PIs will use the societal impact of this work to increase student enthusiasm, enrollment, and diversity.

进入沟通在任何国家的社会经济发展中都起着关键作用。尽管互联网彻底改变了工业化世界的经济，社会，财务和教育部门的发展，但它也创造了一个“数字鸿沟”，将富裕和发展的国家与世界发展中和欠发达地区分开。通过互联网售货亭和咖啡馆将互联网连接带到农村地区，公民经常步行前往这些中心区域以访问互联网，从而取得了重大进展。尽管通过这种模型显然访问互联网总比根本无法访问要好得多，但由于与房屋相距较长的旅行距离，可用性有限，可用性，高使用成本和较长的等待时间，这些公共终端并不是令人满意的最终解决方案。这项研究的目的是将互联网连接扩展到从远距离链接到社区的访问（即居民，范围内的范围），从而延长社区的范围，从而涵盖了该范围，以至于涵盖了范围，以至于覆盖了范围，以至于覆盖了范围，以至于范围内的范围，以至于范围内的范围，以至于，该范围的范围是，该范围是覆盖范围，以至于范围内的范围，范围内的范围，以至于，该范围是范围的范围。办公室，学校和公共建筑。该研究由雄心勃勃的综合研究项目组成，该项目在整个发展中的村庄中提供了互联网连接。这项工作与农村无线网络上的先前工作不同，并且是互补的，因为重点不是将本地网络连接到Internet的长途链接，而是在为当前可用的最终设备提供广泛的本地覆盖的解决方案的开发。与赞比亚农村地区合作，将开发一种网络架构，可大大增强非洲农村和其他地方的互联网访问。这项工作做出了一些关键的贡献： - 为了在地理分散的农村社区中提供广泛的连接性，将开发一个定制的跨层协议堆栈，用于白色空间光谱。该堆栈包括一个集成的PHY/MAC层，称为传输层，该层共同考虑干扰属性，能量约束和应用要求，以选择传输参数和通道访问策略以最有效地利用可用的频谱。 - 为了最大程度地减少对已经拥挤的Internet Gateway链接的影响，这是一种新颖的网络架构和支持应用程序（称为Villageshare）的影响，将旨在隔离本地社区网络中的本地网络流量：源自本地社区网络中的流量完全避免了网关链接。正如在初步工作中发现的那样，网关链接上的不必要的传输构成了农村社区的灾难性问题，导致了中断的会议，降低了连接和最终用户的经验。利用白色空间网络作为骨干。-为了评估工作的疗效并影响解决方案设计，将通过与合作伙伴机构合作来进行赞比亚马查的ICT的定性民族志研究。该研究将探索开发解决方案的社会，文化和经济影响，并确保与Zambian农村合作设计解决方案。-为了证明我们综合系统的好处，我们开发了RemoteMath，这是一种基于SMS/语音的数学辅导系统，学生可以通过该系统获得该系统，该系统可以通过该系统获得上学辅助工程后的Math Homework.Broadeer.Broadeer.Broadeer.Broadeer.Broadeer.Broadeer。该奖项的工作将通过扩大发展区域中互联网访问的效用，从而产生深远的影响。先前的研究清楚地表明，农村社区中互联网连接的巨大经济，社会和教育益处。通过主要研究人员与两个非洲组织的合作关系，这项工作将通过开发和部署技术来直接影响当地的非洲人，从而解决复杂的技术问题，同时实现可实施的可部署解决方案。在本地，这项工作的直接影响是对本科生和研究生的教育，涉及计算机科学研究对社会影响的巨大潜力。 PI将利用他们参与UCSB信息技术与社会（CIT）（CITS）的参与，以创建有关发展区域技术的跨学科课程。在CS入学率正在减少的时候，PI将利用这项工作的社会影响来增加学生的热情，入学率和多样性。