Improving Rural Mobile Connectivity in Nigeria Using Low-cost Transceiver Architecture

Rural Broadband Access is one of the most significant communication challenges facing several communities in different countries. Several strategies have been deployed to increase rural broadband penetration, but they have not yielded the desired impact. This is largely due to the lack of the required infrastructure and the low economic power in those locations. This work presents the development of a low-power and low-cost transceiver system for extending mobile communication services to rural areas. The prototype design achieved a range of over 4 km from the nearest BTS to the rural communities, a 50% reduction in the Low Noise Amplifier and Power Amplifier chips as well as a 75% reduction in the VCO required thus enabling the system to run on renewable power supply. The system will enable operators to deploy low-cost scalable mobile communication services to low-density rural areas without having to incur the huge overhead costs associated with deploying such services.