A novel architecture for last mile connectivity for rural India using NOFN

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel architecture for last mile connectivity for rural India. This proposed architecture provides a low cost GSM connectivity using distributed Radio Access Network (RAN) architecture principle of Base Band Unit (BBU) and Remote Radio Unit (RRU), leveraging the existing National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) infrastructure and deploying a WiFi based front-haul. The paper also proposes 2 methods for splitting the BBU-RRU functionality namely, transmission of GSM bursts over WiFi and transmission of GSM samples over WiFi. The numerical analysis for both these proposed methods are presented in this paper.