Repeater Coordination for Ultra-Long-Range Rural Wireless Broadband Access

Staggering inequalities in broadband access between urban and rural areas continue to persist in theUnited States. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) 22.3% of Americansin rural areas and 27.7% of Americans in Tribal lands lack coverage from fixed terrestrialbroadband as compared to only 1.5% in urban areas. A lack of access to broadband has seriousnegative consequences for rural health and digital inclusivity.Tiami LLC's solution for the rural broadband gap is a repeater coordination method that translates5G mobile network frequencies to TV White Space and effectively doubles TVWS transmissionrange in a cost-effective manner.Tiami's first innovation is to coordinate two geographically separated and compact TVWS devicesto achieve the equivalent range of a much larger multi-antenna system without having to deploy agigantic monolithic device. Tiami's second innovation is to leverage existing 5G networks forbackhaul thereby eliminating the cost of building an entire network from scratch that caters to onlyrural users. The efforts in the Phase I period to design and evaluate the performance of CREWS andits effectiveness in rural propagation channels are critical for progressing to Phase II. The Phase Istudy will identify the optimal radio carrier frequency and bandwidth for the system perform aperformance evaluation of the expected data rate and coverage area for different rural radiopropagation profiles and characterize the anticipated size weight and power (SWaP) requirementsof the repeater.