Intel hopes to unwire the world with long-range WiFi

Improving the number of people worldwide who have access to the Internet has been a stated goal of nations, international bodies, and NGOs for years, but practical attempts to do so have often faced daunting challenges. Hostile terrain, periodic extremes of temperature and weather, limited/intermittent electrical power, and the ever-present danger of being eaten by lions, bears, or giant fire-breathing iguanas are all issues that must be solved, and that's before the human factors are dealt with. It does no good, after all, to run a copper cable into a town to provide Internet access, only to have someone dig it up next week and sell it for scrap.

Intel's Rural Connectivity Platform (RCP) is designed to push traditional 802.11 wireless connections out to much greater distances than would normally be possible, thereby reducing the amount of cable that must be laid between any two points. Using the 802.11 standard means that spectrum availability is not usually an issue, and Intel's RCP supports frequencies of 900MHz, 2.4GHz, and the 5.2-5.8GHz spectrum.

The idea of focusing and transmitting a wireless signal in order to boost its range is nothing new, but Intel's RCP uses a modified TDMA (time division multiple access) system. A standard wireless system broadcasts a message and waits for a reply. If the reply is not acknowledged within a certain period of time, the station broadcasts again. Intel's RCP TDMA system does away with the acknowledgment phase, and gives each radio a set block of time to send data and a set block of time to receive it. According to Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel, removing the acknowledgment phase substantially increases the amount of bandwidth that's available at any given point, thus increasing the wireless system's range. Intel's specifications for RCP deployment state that towers may be up to 60 miles (100km) apart. Towers can be deployed in several different configurations, as shown below:

Intel isn't ready for full commercial deployment at present—sales should begin in India later this year—but the company's RCP has a number of potential advantages. At less than $500 per unit and an estimated $1,000 for two nodes and the associated backend infrastructure, the RCP should deliver Internet access at a much lower cost-per-user then more traditional access methods can manage. Battery replacement or adequate power delivery is also a non-issue—Intel's RCP only draws 5-6W at most, which means the unit's needs can be met by solar power.

The RCP's estimated 6.5Mbps of total bandwidth won't exactly turn Asian gold farmers or remote village-dwellers into BitTorrent freaks, but it should provide plenty of speed to allow for basic e-mail and Internet connectivity. Developing nations have reportedly expressed a high degree of interest in the RCP. If the Indian deployment goes well later this year, general availability is likely to follow in short order.

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