Integrated Access and Backhaul based 5G Connectivity for Rural Indian Sectors - Ending the Digital Divide

The world is heading towards deployment of 5G commercially by the year 2020. But providing broadband 5G connectivity to remote rural regions is a significant challenge. Fiber connectivity has attempted to penetrate rural regions but last mile connectivity is still a problem in many rural sectors due to improper land demarcation and hostile terrain. A scheme which is based on the Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) concept is proposed to provide last mile 5G connectivity to satisfy the broadband needs of rural subscribers. A wireless 5G downlink environment following 3GPP NR specifications with a significantly high throughput is simulated. The last mile link is provided through a 28GHz carrier from a proposed IAB node delivering a data throughput of 4301 Gbps for single-user carrier aggregation and 5.733 Gbps for multi-user carrier aggregation which is quite promising for broadband service, like high-speed Internet and streaming video. The results presented in this work are observed to agree favourably with the results of other researchers in the field.