Energy-Efficient Multi-Radio Microwave and IAB-Based Fixed Wireless Access for Rural Areas

TL;DR

This paper presents an energy-efficient multi-radio framework combining microwave, IAB, and FWA technologies to enhance rural broadband coverage, optimizing energy use while maintaining high data rates in multi-hop networks.

Contribution

It introduces a unified multi-hop framework integrating microwave, IAB, and FWA for rural connectivity, with novel energy optimization strategies for multi-radio networks.

Findings

Energy consumption increases with the number of hops.

Dynamic operation reduces energy use during low network utilization.

Optimized resource allocation satisfies data rate constraints efficiently.

Abstract

Deploying fiber optics as a last-mile solution in rural areas is not economically viable due to low population density. Nevertheless, providing high-speed internet access in these regions is essential to promote digital inclusion. 5G Fixed Wireless Access (5G FWA) has emerged as a promising alternative; however, its one-hop topology limits coverage. To overcome this limitation, a multi-hop architecture is required. This work proposes a unified multi-hop framework that integrates long-haul microwave, Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), and FWA to provide wide coverage and high capacity in rural areas. As the number of hops increases, total energy consumption also rises, a challenge often overlooked in existing literature. To address this, we propose an energy-efficient multi-radio microwave and IAB-based FWA framework for rural area connectivity. When the network is underutilized, the proposed approach dynamically operates at reduced capacity to minimize energy consumption. We optimize the off, start-up, serving, deep sleep, and wake-up sates of microwave radios to balance energy use and satisfying data rate requirements. Additionally, we optimize resource block allocation for IAB-based FWA nodes connected to microwave backhaul. The formulated optimization problems aim to minimize the energy consumption of long-haul microwave and multi-hop IAB-based network while satisfying data rate constraints. These problems are solved using dual decomposition and multi-convex programming, supported by dynamic programming. Simulation results demonstrates