A Key 6G Challenge and Opportunity -- Connecting the Remaining 4 Billions: A Survey on Rural Connectivity

TL;DR

This survey reviews technologies for rural connectivity, analyzing their energy and cost efficiency, discussing application scenarios, and outlining future directions to connect the remaining unconnected populations worldwide.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current rural connectivity technologies, including fronthaul and backhaul solutions, and discusses future research directions.

Findings

Energy-efficient rural connectivity solutions identified

Cost-effective backhaul techniques analyzed

Country-specific use cases surveyed

Abstract

Providing connectivity to around half of the World population living in rural or underprivileged areas is a tremendous challenge, but also a unique opportunity. In this paper, a survey of technologies for providing connectivity to rural areas, and that can help address this challenge, is provided. Fronthaul and backhaul techniques are discussed. In addition, energy and cost efficiency of the studied technologies are analyzed. Typical application scenarios in rural areas are discussed, and several country-specific use cases are surveyed. Directions for future evolution of rural connectivity are outlined.