A new topology for telecom and broad band services in spars, remote and hilly areas

Abstract

Technological development and mass scale deployment of mobile telephony in the last 15-20 yrs has made telecom services an essential commodity for the modern age society. Affordable and wide spread availability of telecom services is giving impetus to digitalization of all the contents and leading to convergence of telecom, media and broadcasting. This phenomenon is further accelerating the demand for higher bandwidth, while at the same time there is a limitation in the availability of additional spectrum and is posing problems due to increased power consumption by telecom systems, ill effects of excessive electromagnetic radiations and scarcity of backbone for carrying telecom traffic. To overcome the above problems there is a need for defining new topologies for telecom and broadband deployment befitting the terrain and population density, particularly in the thinly populated, remote and hilly areas where making available regular power supply for operating telecom infrastructure round the clock and installing backbone infrastructure in the conventional way is impractical and not cost effective. A study is attempted to define a new telecom network deployment topology that would reduce the power and backbone backup required by almost 50 times while at the same time, increase and make available broadband connectivity on demand and also reduce the ill effect of electromagnetic radiations in a phenomenal manner. The authors have attempted to vary the capacity and coverage, of telecom services provided, based on the requirement, and have also phenomenally increased the coverage provided by the mother BTS by increasing its height by almost 10 times by placing it in a tethered balloon. While this would provide uniform umbrella coverage with low traffic capacity over a large area i.e., upto 5000 Sq Kms, enhanced capacity would be provided in pockets under this umbrella in populated residential area (villages) and office complexes by installing very low power BTSs which are equivalent system capable of being operated using alternate sources of energy like wind, solar etc and also cause negligible electromagnetic radiation pollution. The umbrella coverage provided by the mother BTS will communicate with these low power BTSs and will also provide backhaul connectivity.