1

Abstract--In this paper we revisited a methodology for planning

and capacity evaluation of community-deployed wireless mesh
networks in rural areas, based on radio equipment parameters for
WiMax technology. The capacity is described by the maximum
end-to-end transmission rate (throughput) provided to each node
that composes the network utilizing interference-based link
scheduling. A community-deployed scenario for Internet access is
studied utilizing 13 sites in rural communities located in the north
center highland region of Nicaragua in Central America. To
reduce the Internet service cost shared common access points are
used in mesh configuration under asymmetric traffic demands.
The radio propagation environment is estimated utilizing free-
available tools that can be used to support rapidly-deployable
broadband networks. Finally, the (upper-bound) capacity
resulting from this approach is computed by applying nonlinear
optimization, and the results show a substantial gain in
comparison with Wi-Fi networks operating on similar conditions.

Index TermsRural Communications, Wireless Mesh
Networks, Community-deployed networks, Wimax.
I. INTRODUCTION
ICARAGUA is the largest country located midway across
Central America, but one of the least densely populated.
Like its economic indicators, Nicaraguas fixed-line
teledensity and mobile penetration is one of the lowest in the
subregion. Since 1990s important policy reforms has been
done by countries of Central America. The reforms have
fostered private sector investment in telecommunication
services and infrastructure providing benefits to their citizens
who now, at least in urban areas, have access to several
telecommunication services. However, although we have
observed tremendous growth in infrastructure and services
(voice and data), it seems to be economically difficult to
extend these benefits to rural areas without the financial
support of the government [1]. So far, the rural areas far from
the main cities have been unattractive to private investors due
to low population density, long distance, and usually irregular
terrain together with low incomes of potential users. In par-
ticular, this problem continues to be a challenge to the
governments of developing countries, whose ultimate goal is to
eliminate the digital divide.


This work was supported in part by the Faculty of Electrical and
Computer engineering (FEC) from UNI, Managua, Nicaragua.


In countries with so many needs, one may think that
investment in telecommunications might have low priority
level. However, for instance the Nicaraguan government
recognizes that the development of and access to
telecommunication means is a key enabler [2] in promoting
job creation, knowledge-based growth, business innovation,
access to valuable information, and can be utilized to improve
education and health-care assistance. Fig.1 shows the general
vision of the Regulator of Nicaragua (TELCOR). To guaranty
universal access to telecommunications to all citizens of the
country requires reducing what is called by the regulator the
market efficiency gap and the real access gap (aimed to be
financed by the Telecommunication funds called, FITEL by its
name in spanish). Furthermore, since the broadband market is
extremely very low in Nicaragua, with less than 1%
penetration. Recently, TELCOR has announced plans for
developing universal broadband access as well, in order to
boost the economic growth of the country. Broadband
technology for rural communications seems to be a key
element in this strategic planning.


Fig. 1. The general vision of the Nicaraguan Regulator regarding universal
access (version of the original in Spanish, www.telcor.gob.ni).

In this context wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are an
appealing technology to provide broadband rural area
communication. WMNs are those networks that mix the two
topologies of wireless networks, Ad-hoc topology and
infrastructure topology. The used of this technology could
influence important changes to the current mechanisms used
regarding the financial support done by governments. By
Wireless Mesh Network Based on Wimax: A
Broadband Technology for Rural
Comunications
Oscar Somarriba Jarqun, Member, IEEE
National University of Engineering (UNI), Managua, Nicaragua
Tel:+ 505 22781460, e-mail: oscar.somarriba@uni.edu.ni
N
2
taking advantage of the self-organizing capability of mesh
networks the communities themselves or even new potential
local players can take an active part in the solution to their
own needs of telecommunications. However, even in the
foreseen scenario where potential users are assumed to be
fixed, urge the availability of easy-to-use and free-of-charge
tools for network planning and capacity estimation as the one
presented in this paper.
Recent work on this area have make used of simulation tools
to analyze the performance in Wimax networks like the one in
[4], and [5], however their work has focus on the performance
analysis and testbed rather than a common frame work to
facilitate community network planning. The contribution of
our work is to apply a methodology of planning for
community-deployed mesh networks making, this time based
on Wimax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave
Access) technology. By the way, Wimax is the commercial
name of the IEEE 802.16. Besides, a Wimax network has been
rolled out with an initial coverage over our capital, Managua,
in order to provide internet services during the fourth quarter
of 2009. This network works mainly based on the
infrastructure mode suitable for urban environment,
accordingly to the cellular paradigm.
On the other hand, WiMAX shares Wi-Fi's strength of being
a wireless technology and of allowing for even cheaper use of
unlicensed spectrum. Besides, WiMAX provides additional
range and better quality of service [6].
So, we will utilize of the free software called Radio
Mobile that incorporate topographical information (with free
available cartography) combined with the use Google Earth
TM

[3]. Using these tools we will present an approach that could
be used for the network deployment and then we will revisit
our methodology [1] for capacity evaluation. The capacity is
described by the maximum end-to-end transmission rate
(throughput) provided to each node that composes the
network. We denote the throughput by and N is the number
of nodes in WMNs, respectively.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows. In
Section II we present the system model and methodology we
apply to study the capacity analysis of a rural region in our
country. Next in Section III, we then describe the community-
deployed networks and capacity evaluation of them. Finally in
Section IV, we have the concluding remarks of the study.
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND METHOD OF ANALYSIS
We will present as an illustrative example the deployment
scenario for Internet access for 13 sites in rural communities of
Nicaragua introduced in [1]. These communities are located in
the north central highlands region of the country, at the
departments of Estel, Madriz and Nueva Segovia. Fig. 2
shows the geographical locations for the communities of
interest utilizing a digital map of the terrain.
The general research question of interest that we would like
to answer is: What is the capacity that a community-deployed
MWNs can provide subject to low cost deployment constrain
for internet access for the 13 telecenters utilizing Wimax?
For low-cost user-deployment we consider the following:

Share internet access: for low-cost internet service (network
service recurrent cost) nodes share access provider.
Utilization of radio equipment parameters on the 2.4GHz
frequency bands (WiMax physical layers). Similar rules to the
FCC part 15 have been adopted in Nicaragua through the rules
in AA001-2006.

We follow a similar approach to the one presented in [1] but
also considering the use of mesh networking with parameters
for WiMax technologies similar the ones utilized in [7] but at
20MHz (bandwidth), in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency
band.
A. Capacity Evaluation
To share common Internet access points in a mesh
configuration we assume asymmetric traffic demand from each
node to a gateway node connected to the internet and the other
way round.
In addition to that, we assume that the average traffic from a
node to the internet is 10% of the traffic from the internet to
that node. This is a reasonable assumption if for instance the
gateway is connected via an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line) service over the PSTN (Public Switched
Telephone Network) and we share this connection providing
similar capacity to all the rural telecenters.
The user-deployed scenario is analyzed estimating the radio
propagation environment of located nodes. The path-losses in
the network are derived utilizing the digital map GTOPO30
with the Longley-Rice model as implemented by the
simulation program Radio Mobile [3].
The (upper-bound) capacity resulting from a user-deployed
approach is evaluated by finding the link transmission
schedule applying nonlinear optimization [8].

Fig. 2. Rural communities of Nicaragua involved in the study (120 km
80km). Source: Map was derived using the freeware software Radio
Mobile [3].
3
B. Analysis and User-deployed Methodology
We can summarize the methodology applied in the next
sections by the following steps from [1]:

I) Network Deployment (User-deployment):
i. Determine the radio network parameters in use
ii. Define the Internet gateway to be used
iii. Determine the link budget between station including
the gateway (this is done with Radio Mobile)
iv. Establish the current network topology
v. If there are nodes that cannot reach the gateway, add
digi-repeater nodes (digipeaters) to extend the
connectivity by multihopping and go to step Iiii.

II) Capacity Analysis Deployment:
i. Define the external traffic load demand from each
node to the Internet gateway and conversely
ii. Calculate the routing matrix
iii. From step IIi and IIii estimate the link traffic load of
the network
iv. Compute the equivalent path-link routing matrix
Rmesh to assess the real relative traffic load
v. Determine the network capacity by interference-
based scheduling (STDMA).

At the early stage of the user-deployment, the network starts
composed only by the nodes located at the communities. Then,
progressively from the gateway towards the communities, the
users add digital-repeaters (if that is necessary) to connect the
network.
Next, to determine the network topology we assume that the
hardware utilized has the physical layer parameters shown in
Table I. Those parameters are based on utilizing equipment
with similar physical layer to IEEE 802.16-2004 group (IEEE
802.16d) operating on the unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency band.
Mesh Mode is an optional topology for user-to-user
communication in non-line of sight IEEE 802.16. It is included
in the standard to allow overlapping, ad hoc networks in the
unlicensed spectrum and extend the edges of the wireless
range at low cost. Mesh support has been extended into the
licensed bands too.
Moreover, to find the path losses, we assume utilization of a
20MHz channel on IEEE802.16d that may correspond to
operate on the frequency range: 2401 MHz- 2421 MHz. To
determine the radio propagation path losses we have used the
Radio Mobile freeware software with 20 meters antennas
height in the nodes, and higher antenna heights in the Internet
gateways that will be introduced in the following sections.
C. Traffic Model
We assume that the average from node to the internet is
10% the traffic from the internet to the nodes. This seems a
reasonable assumption if for instance the gateway is connected
via an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) service
and we would like to share this connection providing similar
service to all telecenters connected to the same gateway. In
ADSL over Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), ITU
G.992.1 Annex A standard, the downstream rate is 12Mbps
and the upstream rate is 1.3 Mbps (which is 10.8% the
downstream rate).

TABLE I
WIMAX PHYSICAL LAYER PARAMETERS

D. STDMA Scheduling for Mesh Network
To find the interference-based scheduling for constant
transmission power and variable rate systems we follow a
procedure similar to the one described in [1]. Using the
available rate sets and required SINR in Table I we find the
sets of cliques containing links having the property that all
links in the same clique can transmit simultaneously selecting
one of the available data rates.
The columns of S can be linearly combined to create the
STDMA (Spatial TDMA) schedule by defining the vector of
weights o = [o
1
o
K
]
T
corresponding to the fraction of the
time that each column vector of S is activated within a
STDMA frame. Hence, for a given o the allocated link
capacity, c = [c
1
c
L
]
T
is given by



(1)
4
The capacity allocation can be done through a scheduling
algorithm. The scheduling algorithm allocates slots and
transmission rates depending on the amount of traffic passing
though each link and the objective function to be maximized.
In order to find the interference-based schedule for max-min
fair allocation we utilized the column generation method [8],
for constant transmission power and variable transmission rate
as formulated in [9] but with the redefined mesh equations
derived in the paper [1]. That is, we find the columns S, o and
Amesh = [
1

p
] that solve the following optimization
problem:
maximize
min

subject to
i

min i ;
Rmesh Amesh s S o;
ok = 1;

min
0
; Amesh
0
;
0s o s 1
;
III. USER-DEPLOYED AND CAPACITY EVALUATION
FOR RURAL COMMUNITIES IN NICARAGUA
A. Description of User-deployed approach
We assume a simple user-deployed behavior. The
community starts by locating their own nodes at their locations
(telecenters) and the shared Internet access node (gateway)
located at the closes land-based infrastructure. At the
communities under consideration there are two municipalities
headend (towns) where it is possible to have access to land-
based Internet services: San Juan de Limay and San Juan del
Rio Coco. The geographical coordinates are shown in the
Table II. In San Juan de Limay the operator Claro ENITEL
has a 63m height tower, and we assume that a similar tower
could be utilized (or is available) in San Juan del Rio Coco.
By utilizing these gateways we can group the communities
into two potential user-deployed subnetworks as shown in Fig.
3. We call subnetwork 1 to the set of communities that are
geographically closer to ENITEL in San Juan de Limay, and
subnetwork 2 to the set of communities closer to San Juan del
Rio Coco. Since in this paper the procedure for community-
deployed approach is similar to our previous work, we will not
elaborate more see [1].
TABLE II
GEOGRAPHICAL COORDINATES FOR INTERNET GATEWAYS

B. Capacity evaluation for subnetwork 1
We apply the described method before together with the
above user-deployed network, and also utilizing
omnidirectional with transmitter antenna gain of 16 dBi and
beam-steering system with antenna gain of 23 dBi (HPBW
stands for Half-power beamwidth). The capacity evaluations
(maximum end-to-end transmission rate o throughput) for
Wimax subnetwork 1 are summarized in Table III:

TABLE III
CAPACITY EVALUATION FOR SUBNETWORK 1 (-)

Antenna
System
IM [dB] Antenna
Gain [dBi]
Uplink
(rate/node)
Downlink
(rate/node)
Total
rate
Omni 2 16 115kbps 1.2Mbps 8.8
Mbps
Beam-
steering
(HPBW
=30)
2 23 233kbps 2.3Mbps 18.0
Mbps
Beam-
steering
(HPBW
=30)
5 23 517kbps 5.2Mbps 40
Mbps

* Communities: San Luis, La Fraternidad, San Lorenzo, El Carizo, El ngel,
El Mojn, San Juan de Limay (gateway). IM = Interference Margin.


Fig. 3. Subnetwork 1 and subnetwork 2. Source: Map was derived using
Google Earth'. Google INC.

We can note that utilizing an interference margin (IM) of
5dB and Beam-steering antennas produces higher end-to-end
data rate. This is because when utilizing IM=2dB with beam-
steering antennas, the network topology changes with respect
to the omnidirectional case.
In summary for Wimax technology, by the simple user-
deployed approach for the subnetwork 1, the (upper bound)
allocated end-to-end downlink transmission rate is up to
6.22Mbps per node (telecenter) and for the uplink is up to
622.4kbps per node in comparison to Wi-Fi networks that
provides 5.167 Mbps (downlink) and 516.7 kbps (uplink),
respectively and they have studied in [1].
C. Capacity evaluation for subnetwork 2
Again, for the gateway at San Juan del Rio Coco we assume
63m tower height and all nodes in the network are assumed to
5
be installed utilizing 20m antenna height.
When utilizing omnidirectional antennas with the selected
points there is not fully connectivity for all nodes that
composes the network. The utilization of beam-steering
antennas with an IM of 2dB make possible to connect all the
communities to the Internet gateway. The increment on the
interference margin is done in order to allowed more resistance
to interference and by this way we remove links with low
transmission rate (we avoid them to be used for routing traffic
and to be scheduled). We apply the described method before
together with the above user-deployed network and also
utilizing beam-steering antenna systems. The capacity
evaluations are summarized in Table IV.

TABLE IV
CAPACITY EVALUATION FOR SUBNETWORK 2 (**)

Antenna
System
IM [dB] Antenna
Gain [dBi]
Uplink
(rate/node)
Downlink
(rate/node)
Total
rate
Omni 2 16 -
- -
Beam-
steering
(HPBW=3
0)
2 23 488.5kbps 4.9Mbps 32.4
Mbps
Beam-
steering
(HPBW=3
0)
5 23
- - -

** Communities: El Ojoche, San Marcanda, El Varrillal, San Miguel, Cristo
Real, El Jobo, San Juan del Rio Coco (gateway).

Hence, for this user-deployed subnetwork using Beam-
steering antennae, the resulting (upper bound) end-to-end
downlink transmission rate is up to about 4.9Mbps per node
(community) and 488.5kbps per node for the uplink in
comparison to Wi-Fi, that provides 3.9 Mbps (downlink) and
388.7 kbps (uplink) respectively (already studied in [1]).
IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this work we have revisited a methodology for capacity
evaluation of user-deployed multihoping wireless network
(WMNs) based on Wimax technology.
The evaluation results shown by an example of planning and
capacity evaluation in rural communities of Nicaragua
demonstrate that mesh networking is an appealing technology
to allow the communities themselves or even new potential
players to take an active part in the solution to their own needs.
This work also shows the need to develop easy-to-use free
software tools coupled with mesh network products to make
the community deployment of mesh networks ubiquitous.
In this work we have extended the methodology proposed in
[1] to include Wimax physical layer for community-deployed
MWNs in rural areas with low density users, which allow the
perform analysis and design of these kinds of networks.
MWNs are an important alternative for fixed wireless
broadband access to cover remotely located places in rough
terrain. However, we have to be aware that in 2.4 GHz
frequency bands for Wimax we can find, among others, further
interference from Wi-Fi systems already operational.
To study the systems we have considered three possibilities:
a) omnidirectional antennas with gain of 16 dBi, b) beam-
steering antenna systems with HPBW of 30 and antenna gain
of 23 dBi with IM=2 dB and c) beam steering with HPBW of
30 with antenna gain of 23 dBi with IM =5.
The results obtained in our subnetworks show a substantial
gain in capacity utilizing Wimax technology in comparison to
Wi-Fi networks (IEEE 802.11g), even though we are using
roughly similar bandwidths (20 MHz versus 22 MHz). Also,
WiMAX provides additional range than Wi-Fi.
Finally, even though WiMAX is economically feasible
option for rural communications, it is still potentially more
expensive than Wi-Fi networks.
REFERENCES
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capacity evaluation of multihop wireless networks: A Case Study for
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th
Scandinavian Workshop on Wireless Ad-
hoc and Sensor Networks (ADHOC08), Stockholm, Sweden.
[2] Fondo de Inversin de Telecomunicaciones (FITEL). [Online].
Available: http://www.telcor.gob.ni/Desplegar.asp?PAG_ID=15
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BIOGRAPHYH
Oscar Somarriba Jarqun, received his title of
Electronic engineer from the National University of
Engineering (UNI), Managua, Nicaragua, in 1989,
and the Technical Licentiate of Engineering degree
in wireless digital systems from the Royal Institute
of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, in
1996. He also founded and headed the
Telecommunications department at UNI from
1989-1992. His employment experience included
the position as chief of staff and maintenance supervisor of the INTELSAT
earths station in Managua, RF Design & Optimization Manager of cellular
and PCS networks (Claro Nicaragua), consultant work and training courses
for several national and international agencies, among them: The National
Telecomm Company (ENITEL), The National Power Utility (ENEL), The
Nicaraguan Geophysical Institute (INETER), COCESNA, BELLSOUTH,
LIO/UN, UNDP/UN, and the World Bank.
His research focuses on complex problems in cross-layer optimization and
scheduling in wireless networks. He has published several papers on multihop
ad hoc networks for rural-area networks and emergency communications.
Currently, he is a senior Researcher with the Master's Programme in ICT at
UNI.