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.

通信在任何国家的社会经济发展中都起着关键作用。虽然互联网彻底改变了工业化世界的经济、社会、金融和教育部门的发展，但它也创造了一个“数字鸿沟”，将富裕和发达国家与世界上的发展中和不发达地区分开。在弥合这一数字鸿沟方面取得了重大进展，通过互联网亭和咖啡馆将互联网连接带到农村地区，公民通常步行到这些中心地区访问互联网。虽然通过这种模式访问Internet显然比完全不访问要好得多，但由于距离家庭很远、可用时间有限、使用成本高和等待时间长，这些公共终端并不是一个令人满意的最终解决方案。这项研究的目标是将互联网连接从通过长途链路（即卫星，远程WiFi等）带入社区的地方扩展到整个村庄，使居民在家中，办公室，学校和公共建筑中都可以上网。这项研究包括一套雄心勃勃的综合研究项目，为发展中地区的一个村庄提供互联网连接。这项工作不同于以前在农村无线网络方面的工作，并且是对其的补充，因为其重点不是将本地网络连接到互联网的长途链路，而是开发解决方案，为当前可用的终端设备在地理上分散的社区提供广泛的本地覆盖。与赞比亚农村人民合作，将开发一个网络架构，大大提高非洲农村和其他地方的互联网接入。这项工作有几个关键贡献：-为了在地理上分散的农村社区提供广泛的连接，将开发用于空白频段的定制跨层协议堆栈。该堆栈包括一个集成的PHY/MAC层，称为传输层，该层共同考虑干扰特性、能量约束和应用需求，以选择传输参数和信道访问策略，以最有效地利用可用频谱。-为了尽量减少对已经拥挤的互联网网关链路的影响，将设计一种称为VillageShare的新型网络架构和配套应用程序，以隔离本地网络流量：在本地社区网络内产生和结束的流量完全避免网关链路。初步工作发现，网关链路上不必要的传输对农村社区构成了灾难性的问题，并导致会话中断、连接中断和终端用户体验差。-为了降低连接成本并为没有家用电脑的用户提供互联网接入，这项工作将开发VillageCell，这是一种低成本的受飞蜂窝启发的系统，利用空白网络作为骨干，为现成的移动电话提供免费的本地互联网、语音和聊天接入。-为了评估工作的效力并影响解决方案的设计，将通过与伙伴机构的合作，对赞比亚Macha社区的信通技术进行定性的民族志研究。该研究将探讨已开发解决方案的社会、文化和经济影响，并确保解决方案的设计与赞比亚农村居民合作。-为了展示我们综合系统的好处，我们开发了RemoteMath，这是一个基于短信/语音的数学辅导系统，学生可以通过它在课后获得数学作业的帮助。更广泛的影响。该奖项的工作将通过扩大发展中地区互联网接入的效用而产生深远的影响。先前的研究清楚地表明，互联网连接在农村社区具有巨大的经济、社会和教育效益。通过主要研究人员与两个非洲组织的伙伴关系，这项工作将通过开发和部署解决复杂技术问题的技术，同时实现实际的、可部署的解决方案，直接影响当地的非洲人。在当地，这项工作的直接影响是教育本科生和研究生关于计算机科学研究对社会影响的巨大潜力。这些学院将利用他们在UCSB信息技术与社会中心（CITS）的参与，为发展中地区开设一门跨学科的技术课程。在计算机科学招生人数减少的时候，pi将利用这项工作的社会影响来提高学生的热情、入学率和多样性。