Enhancing Rural Connectivity with FWA solution: a Focus on Uplink Performance

This paper investigates the potential of fixed wireless access (FWA) as a viable solution for enhancing rural connectivity in Malaysia. In order to overcome the challenges posed by traditional fiber optic deployment in diverse geographical landscapes, FWA offers a promising alternative. By analyzing the uplink performance of FWA deployments in rural areas, this study demonstrates its effectiveness in addressing the connectivity limitations experienced by rural communities. The paper presents comparative measurements between indoor and outdoor FWA installations, highlighting the significant improvement in uplink throughput achieved with outdoor deployments. The upload performance saw a significant improvement across the field trial sites, with some users experiencing increases from as low as 0.01 Mbps to up to 16 Mbps. Furthermore, the paper explores the potential applications enabled by enhanced uplink connectivity, such as online education, remote local business and telemedicine.