Cactus Graph Structure to Model Broadband Network Connectivity of Remote Communities

Reducing gaps in digital divide among urban and remote user communities with rapid expansion of broadband telecommunication networks is a vital part of sustainable development. Remote communities are identified as potential users of broadband services who are isolated from the existing terrestrial telecommunication network infrastructure due to navigation and terrain constraints. This paper highlights the use of cactus graph structure to model expansions of existing terrestrial infrastructure sharing models. In these expansions, remote community networks connect as cactus sub-graphs. Maintaining connectivity among the network devices is an important concern in such expansions of infrastructure sharing models. This paper proposes a solution to evaluate the existence of reliable connectivity using spanning tree technique supported by the probabilistic edge weights assigned to reflect the signal quality. These results provide better understanding of using cactus graph structures to overcome limitations in modeling network architecture expansions in connecting rural/remote communities.