Third International Conference on Broadband Communications, Information Technology & Biomedical Applications

Building Wireless Community Networks with

802.16 Standard
K. Sibanda, H.N. Muyingi and N. Mabanza
University of Fort Hare, Private Bag X1314, Alice 5700
Computer Science Department
ksibanda@ufh.ac.za, hmuying@ufh.ac.za, nmabanza@ufh.ac.za
Tel: +27 40 602 2464 +27 40 602 2230, Fax: +27 40 602 2464
Cell: +27 720 713 064 +27 82703922

environment, fault tolerance, technological availability,

commercial availability and QoS.
Abstract— Network deployment in rural areas of developing
nations is a challenge to social conscience and technical capability
and affordability. Because most rural areas have no copper Table 1: WiMAX versus WiFi
telecommunication legacy, they can leapfrog to using wireless
technologies. These technologies allow "bypassing stages in WiMAX WiFi Technical Differences
capacity building or investment through which countries were
Range Up to 30 miles Sub-300 feet 802.16 tolerates
previously required to pass during the process of economic typical cell size greater multi-path,
development [11]." In this work we discuss challenges of of 4-6 miles delay spread via
deploying broadband networks in rural areas. WiMAX implementation of 256
technology is presented as a technology that can now provide FFT vs. 64FFT for
broadband connectivity in developing regions. We further discuss 802.11
Dwesa (SA) communication network which used WiMAX
Coverage Outdoor NLOS- Optimised for 802.16 systems have
technology to provide internet connectivity to a rural community
performance indoor an overall higher
in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. standard support performance, system gain,
for advanced short range delivering greater
Keywords—WiMAX, Rural Areas, Connectivity, Technologies antenna penetration through
techniques obstacles at longer
I. INTRODUCTION distances

Wireless infrastructure growth can play a pivotal role in

economic growth and poverty reduction in rural communities.
It can also enhance social equity in terms of health security,
access to information, and improved education. However, the
reality is that extending network coverage to rural regions Scalability Designed to Intended for LAN 802.16 can use all
remains a big challenge. Two wireless technologies, the support applications, available frequencies,
802.11 and the 802.16 standards, popularly referred to as WiFi hundreds of users scale from multiple channels
CPEs, with one to tens with support cellular
and WiMAX respectively have emerged as low cost
unlimited one subscriber for deployment, 802.11 is
technologies to deploy networks in remote communities. This subscribers each CPE device limited to license
has seen also a lot of debate on which technology provides the behind each exempt spectrum
lowest cost. The two should be considered as complementary CPE
and not competing. WiFi technology was originally designed
for LANs, hence a number of challenges still limit its efficient
deployment for WANs. Some of those challenges include
Bit Rate 5bps/Hz peak up 2.7 bps/Hz peak Higher modulations
small coverage area and low data rates as revealed in table 1.
to 100Mbp/s in up to 54Mbp/s in coupled with flexible
It is shown in table 1 that WiMAX can cover larger areas 20 MHz channel 20MHz channel error correction results
measured in km while WiFi can cover smaller areas measured in more efficient use
in m. WiMAX is scalable and can use all available frequencies of spectrum
making it adaptable to any environment. The 802.16 standard
addresses all limitations of WiFi and can make high end
wireless a reality [3].
According to Lopez et al. [6] the right selection of the
For the purposes of our work, we discuss capacity, range,
wireless solution is determined by the technological capacity,
range, noise immunity, noise emission, security, setup and setup and running costs, free versus licensed operation and
technological availability, however, works on noise immunity
running costs, power consumption, free versus licensed
can be found in [9], noise emission is discussed in [1]. There
operation, regulations, compatibility with hazardous
are vast sources which deal with security issues including [5].

978-0-7695-3453-4/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE 384

DOI 10.1109/BROADCOM.2008.55
Issues on the compatibility with hazardous environment are
dealt with in [4]. The fault tolerance is discussed in [15], while
issues on commercial availability are mentioned in [12].
Profound research and publications have been done on the
QoS of wireless technologies. Lorenz [7] gives more details in
that regard. In this paper we show the capabilities of WiMAX
which make it a better choice in rural areas. We also discuss a
case study where WiMAX was used to connect a remote
community.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows; in section II
we discuss the determinants of network selection and section
III is a brief discussion of the challenges of network
deployment in rural areas. An overview of WiMAX is
presented in section IV. Our discussion on the Dwesa
communication network is found in section V and we
conclude with section VI.
II. DETERMINANTS OF SELECTION
A. Network capacity
The network’s capacity is the maximum amount of data or
number of users that can be simultaneously on the network.
Network capacity depends on network size, traffic pattern and
local radio transitions. Each access point (AP) has maximum
bandwidth and the total bandwidth divides across the total
number of users currently using that AP. When deploying
wireless infrastructure, there is need to consider the number of
people to be serviced, the locations as well as applications to
be used as these will determine the minimum bandwidth
required.
B. Network range
The range of a network is the area around the AP within
which a client can connect to the network. To improve range,
the wireless router is to be positioned central to the area. When
operating at limits of range, the performance may drop, as the
quality of connection deteriorates with distance from the AP.
Range is very important when selecting wireless technology to
be used, as extending connectivity to the whole desired area
involve costs.
C. Setup costs
The setup costs are costs in putting up network
infrastructure and finally putting it to operation. For
economies of scale, those costs should not be too high. The
trend is that the technology with lower set up and running
costs will be preferred or the other factors will come in also.
The spectrum use is usually allocated by a regulating body
through licensing. There are usually barriers in spectrum
licensing which include bureaucratic procedures through the
regulating body. Licensing of spectrum is usually based on
auction. The control of spectrum is very fundamental for a
number of reasons: to ensure QoS of the network and to avoid
interference. However, as spectrum licensing increase the
Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) costs, the use of unlicensed
spectrum will tremendously reduce the CAPEX. The use of
unlicensed spectrum is ideal for short range to avoid massive
interference. The ideal location to use unlicensed spectrum
will be in the rural areas of most developing countries as there
is less likelihood of strong interference.
385
The technology to be preferred for deployment must be
available locally and costs should be reasonable. Most of the
wireless technologies are now available in most developing
nations and the proliferation of numerous vendors because of
standardization, have helped in driving the costs of equipment
down.
III. CHALLENGES OF NETWORK DEPLOYMENT
IN RURAL AREAS
The landscape in most rural areas is usually challenging,
with mountainous terrain, valleys, swamps etc. This makes
deploying infrastructure very difficult. Beside those
challenges, most of the inhabitants are poverty stricken and are
‘naturally’ not worried much about technology. Thus
providing affordable connectivity is more than a challenge.
Other limitations include absence of electricity supply and
issues related to equipment security. Some areas in remote
regions still lag behind in electrification programs and this is a
hindrance to network deployment. Because of poverty,
equipment is liable to vandalism and theft. In developing
regions "Poverty is accepted as the act of God and prevalent
hunger spells reign in totality on the planning of one’s
activities. [10]" Levels of literacy are very low and income is
by all standards meager. All those characteristics are a good
recipe for lack of network deployment in rural areas.
IV. WiMAX FOR RURAL CONNECTIVITY
The 1EEE 802.16 standard popularly known as WiMAX is
an emerging wireless communications technology. It can
provide broadband wireless access (BWA) connectivity to a
radius of up to 50km for fixed station and up to 15km for
mobile stations. WiMAX operates on both licensed and
unlicensed spectrums. The costs associated with licensing are
eliminated when using the unlicensed spectrum. Additionally,
when using the licensed spectrum, interference is drastically
reduced there by improving network capacity and scalability
[8]. Interference in wireless systems is one of the most
significant factors that limit the network capacity and
scalability. This however is not a big issue in rural areas as
sources of interference are very limited. This makes wireless
networks the only viable solution for connecting remote areas.
WiMAX has undergone several changes since 2002. These
changes are represented in Figure 1. The WiMAX
transformations over the years have seen a strong ecosystem
of vendors emerging and this continue to drive prices of
WiMAX products down to levels conducive to deploy it in
rural areas. WiMAX typically consists of a base station which
includes indoor electronics and tower.
 service providers can rollout most of their applications. For
example the Dwesa community in South Africa is today
enjoying connectivity through WiMAX technology. In the
following section we make an overview of the Dwesa
network.

Figure 1: WiMAX progress. Source [14]

A single base station can deliver service up to a radius of

10km. this range is usually extended, although theoretically
[8] to 50km radius. WiMAX also consists of the receiver
which could be a stand alone box or a PC card that is
endogenic in a laptop or computer. Transfer of data is better
than WiFi, because "WiMAX is based on an RF technology
called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Figure 2: WiMAX throughput versus range [2]
which is a very effective means of transferring data when
carriers of width of 5MHz or greater can be used [8]." During V. THE DWESA COMMUNICATION NETWORK
data exchange authorization, WiMAX utilizes the grant
mechanism. This is made possible by the Media Access In a place haunted by previous segregation and
Control (MAC) layer [8] which optimizes the utilization of marginalisation, communication is vital for confidence
radio resources. building and literacy promotion. Dwesa is a remote rural area
Like WiFi, WiMAX standardization ensures reduced costs, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. It is separated by the
which could be incurred by vendors through deployment and Mbashe River and spread across two adjacent coastal districts
verification of access control systems. Equipment costs are of southern Transkei. It is between Ntlonyane River in the
further lowered by successful manufacturing efficiencies [8] north-east and the Nqabara River in the south west. The
which have increased the production of components to remoteness of the area and its rough terrain with undulations
exponential levels. Other benefits of WiMAX include "… makes copper communication infrastructure very costly, hence
lower backhaul deployment costs, rapid deployment and wireless technology is the most affordable solution in this
reconfigurability [8]." The concern of Service Providers (SP) area. The Dwesa community is now enjoying wireless
is to provide integrated services which satisfy customer needs. connectivity, a network deployed by the Universities of Fort
The WiMAX protocol is designed to work with several data Hare and Rhodes through their Telkom Centre of Excellency
transmission techniques e.g. VoIP, which makes it suitable to (CoE)'s research endeavour. This network is shown in Figure
provide integrated services. The suitability of WiMAX as a 3. It consists of the VSAT which brings backhaul connectivity
solution to rural connectivity is therefore unquestionable. The and the WiMAX serving as the base station. The connected
technology's range capability coupled with its non line of sight schools are taking advantage of the internet by embarking on
(NLOS) transmission ability, places it as a complete solution e-learning. This has generated a lot of interest among students
for rural connectivity. Many remote communities are set to and teachers.
benefit from this wireless technology
Throughput is very important for different services that can
be offered by service providers. Figure 2 shows that on LOS
WiMAX can service an area of more than 10km radius at
10Mbit/s throughput. This radius is enough to cover most of
the villages in rural areas of developing regions. WiMAX can
serve such an area with only one Access Point (AP) thus
reducing CAPEX. At lower frequency bands e.g. 2.4 GHz, a
throughput of more than 2Mbit/s can be achieved for 70km
range. Figure 2 only shows frequency band of 3.5GHz. In
rural areas there are less tall buildings and this indicates that
LOS can be achieved in most areas. On NLOS WiMAX can
give a throughput of 10Mbit/s for an area of about 5km radius
as shown in Figure 2. Hence in terms of throughput WiMAX
technology can service the entire village using one AP and Figure 3: Dwesa network infrastructure [12]

386

Mpume School (A in figure 3) was the first to be connected
because of electricity availability [12]. WiMAX was then used
to connect other schools Mtokwane (school B) and Nondobo
(school C). The 10th of October 2007 saw Ngwane (School D),
the fourth school officially opening its computer laboratory.
The schools are serving the community as kiosk centres. The
two universities continue to offer support through other
projects that include deploying e-commerce and the training of
personnel manning the centres. All connected schools offer
services that include e-mail, web browsing and VoIP. All the
connected schools are on LOS making it possible to achieve
high throughput. The typical throughput on the links ranges
from 5-7Mbps. A throughput of 256kbps is sufficient for a
good quality video conferencing. Thus the Dwesa network is
even suitable for video conferencing.
A. Reduced CAPEX
Flexible hardware and software programmable radios
provide the benefit of no touch software updates. The software
used for operating system is the free and open source software
running Ubuntu [12]. The free and open source software
allows "implementation of wide range of networking functions
on the system [12]." The WiMAX's integrated RF antenna
design used on the Dwesa site eliminates the need for costly
and heavy coaxial cables between antennas and baseband
modules and avoids power losses associated with RF coaxial
cables. The use of the free spectrum further eliminates costs
associated with purchasing spectrum and brought down set up
costs. Interference issues are not a problem within the area as
Dwesa is a rural with less signal interference sources such as
extensive use of radios from security companies and police
that are common in urban centres.
Most significant costs for the network included the
purchasing of WiMAX Alvarion base station equipment at a
cost of US$ 5 780, cost of VSAT installation at US$380 and
its monthly fees of US$188. The LAN networking cost
US$180. A number of other equipment was donated by
various organisations. These include client servers, computers,
routers and switches. This reduced drastically the capital costs
of setting up the network.
B. Operational challenges
The Dwesa network has encountered a number of
challenges that prevent smooth operation. Frequent power
outages were common and that has contributed to malfunction
of components and increased maintenance costs. Response to
fault reports at times is delayed because the team that support
the network resides away from the site. This has seen an
increased downtime. The Universities of Fort Hare and
Rhodes were involved in all aspects of network planning,
deployment, configuration and maintenance. The hope had
been that they would eventually transfer maintenance and
management to locals. That has been a big challenge because
of lack of skills and experience among the locals. This has
seen the team from both universities continuing to give
support and monitor network over the Internet.
387
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Although a lot of debate still surrounds WiMAX standard
and its benefits in comparison with other wireless standards,
the rollout of this network technology in Dwesa and other
experimental sites in rural areas suggest that WiMAX is an
ideal technology to connect remote areas. WiMAX can
provide connectivity over a wide coverage area, probably the
whole village. The deployment of networks in rural areas
brings a lot of benefits. These include access to information,
access to internet applications like web browsing, e-mail and
VoIP, Literacy rates are also to improve in connected areas.
A number of challenges still remain; these include power
outages that result to malfunction of some components, low
adoption, lack of local skills and significant downtime. As a
result there has been an increase of operational costs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to express our gratitude to the Universities
of Fort Hare's and Rhodes' CoEs for the information on the
Dwesa Project. We also acknowledge the Telkom and its
associates for funding the project that has brought so much
development within Dwesa community.
REFERENCES
[1]. Acoustic Noise Emission and
Communication Systems in the Next
Century, Electronics cooling magazine,
http://www.electronics-cooling.com/articles/
1999/1999_jan_article2.php
[2]. Braten L. E. Affordable broadband for rural
areas, Results from BROADWAN Project,
http://www.telenor.no/broadwan/BROADW
AN_CD/Presentations/Braten_BROADWA
NWorkshopNov2005.pdf
[3]. Caroline G, WiMAX: The critical wireless
standard, Research report, 2003
http://www.arcchart.com/pr/blueprint/pdf/Bl
uePrint_WiFi_REPORT_I.pdf
[4]. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/w
ireless/products_category_buyers_guide.htm
l
[5]. Karygiannis T. and Owens L, Wireless
Network Security 802.11, Bluetooth and
Handheld Devices,
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800
-48/NIST_SP_800-48.pdf
[6]. Lopez E.E, Sala A, Alonso J, Haro J,
Sanahuja J, Wireless communications
deployment in industry:a review of issues,
options and technologies
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?
_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V2D-4F15008-1
&_user=2093731&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=
 search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C0000561 industry.com/sp/gbm/dl/WiMax
42&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=2 %20Backhaul%20101106%20Final.pdf
093731&md5=cf859f0a7b01e8d223210e6ae [14].WiMAX Business Models,
6aef49c
http://121.254.145.213/data1/ftp/gisa_downl
[7]. Lorenz P, QoS in the Next Generation of
oad/WIMAXWORLD%20Model
Wireless Networks, Tutorial,
%202005-2008.pdf
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~benny/icwlhn20
[15].Xiang-Y, Peng-Jun L, Wan Yu W and
02/tutorial5.pdf
Chih-Wei Y, Fault Tolerant Deployment and
[8]. Omerovic S, WiMAX Overview, Topology Control in Wireless Networks,
http://www.lkn.fe.uni- http://www.sigmobile.org/mobihoc/2003/pa
lj.si/publikacije/seminarji_06/mobilne/s_om pers/p117-li.pdf
erovic.pdf
[9]. Radio frequency integrated circuit layout About the Authors
with noise immunity border,
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7099648. Khulumani Sibanda is a computer science PhD fellow at the
html University of Fort Hare, researching on wireless internet
technologies. He obtained his Masters Degree in Computer
[10].Sibanda K., Muyingi H. and Mpofu N.,
Closing the Digital Divide: Towards Science from the National University of Science and
wireless technology architecture for rural Technology in Zimbabwe in 2004. His research interests
connectivity. ICT Africa NEPAD include wireless technologies, cost modelling, Internet Quality
of Service, ICTs in disadvantaged communities,
Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2008
[11].Steinmueller E, ICTs and the possibilities telecommunications and transaction processing.
for leapfrogging by developing countries,
NH. Muyingi is a Professor in the computer science
International Labour Review vol 140, No 2,
department. His research interest include sensor networks,
2001, PLC and wireless technology
http://www.geog.psu.edu/courses/geog497b/
Readings/Steinmueller--Leapfrogging.pdf Ntima Mabanza obtained his masters degree from the
[12].Tarwireyi P., Terzoli A., and Thinyane M., University of Fort Hare in South Africa. He is currently on the
Implementation of an Internet Access Cost Computer Science lecturing staff at the University of Fort
Management System for Disadvantaged
Hare. His research interests are E-Commerce, M-Commerce
Communities, SATNAC conference, Sugar
Beach Resort, Mauritius, 2007 security protocols, wireless technologies, and Open Source
[13].Wells J, White Paper on WiMAX Backhaul XML Databases.
at 70/80 GHz, http://www.wimax-

388