[Mesh] Fwd: [eecs-announce] Dissertation Talk: Community Cellular Networks

[Mitar]

Hi!

Great stuff.


Mitar

-------- Original Message --------
From: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl at cs.berkeley.edu>
Subject: [eecs-announce] Dissertation Talk: Community Cellular Networks
To: eecs-announce at lists.eecs.berkeley.edu

Title: Community Cellular Networks
Speaker: Kurtis Heimerl
Advisors: Eric Brewer and Tapan Parikh

Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Time: 2:00 PM
Place: 242 Sutardja Dai Hall (Not Soda, Jorge took the nice room :( )

Abstract: Cellular networks are one of the most important innovations of
the 20th century, with over six billion subscribers across all continents
on Earth. Despite this, hundreds of millions of people in rural areas
remain without coverage. We see two reasons for this: First, cellular
installations are very expensive to install in rural areas, with power
costs dominating the price of the total install. Secondly, cellular
equipment is traditionally installed “top-down”, with major nation-scale
providers bringing coverage to rural areas. In this work, we propose the
model of Community Cellular Networks, small scale, low cost, locally
operated cellular networks.

To enable community cellular networks, we utilize OpenBTS, an open-source
implementation of the GSM um layer. Building on this, we implemented two
key technological innovations. The first is Virtual Coverage. Virtual
Coverage introduces a “sleep” mode into the GSM protocol, allowing the base
station (BTS) to “sleep” when the network is idle, reducing power draw. An
autonomous radio, the WUR, allows users to “wake” the BTS when they need to
communicate. Secondly, we implemented the Village Base Station, a series of
extensions to OpenBTS and FreeSWITCH allowing for easily customizable
cellular networks.

These innovations were evaluated in the context of an in situ deployment of
both Virtual Coverage and the Village Base Station in a small community in
rural Papua, Indonesia. Through this 10 month ongoing deployment, we found
that Virtual Coverage reduced the night power draw of the network by 56.6%.
We also found that the Village Base Station allowed us to build a network
well suited to the community. As of now, it has handled over 200 thousand
SMS and is financially sustainable for the local operator, even if they
were forced to finance the network entirely.

I plan on purchasing Rambutan for this talk as well. Take that under
advisement.


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