Smart Grid and Innovative Frontiers in Telecommunications. Third International Conference, SmartGIFT 2018, Auckland, New Zealand, April 23-24, 2018, Proceedings

Research Article

A Sustainable Connectivity Model of the Internet Access Technologies in Rural and Low-Income Areas

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-319-94965-9_10,
        author={Maria Villapol and William Liu and Jairo Gutierrez and Junaid Qadir and Steven Gordon and Jin Tan and Luca Chiaraviglio and Jinsong Wu and Wenjun Zhang},
        title={A Sustainable Connectivity Model of the Internet Access Technologies in Rural and Low-Income Areas},
        proceedings={Smart Grid and Innovative Frontiers in Telecommunications. Third International Conference, SmartGIFT 2018, Auckland, New Zealand, April 23-24, 2018, Proceedings},
        proceedings_a={SMARTGIFT},
        year={2018},
        month={7},
        keywords={Internet access Sustainable connectivity Rural and low-income areas Affordability Social shareability Geographical network coverage Hypergraph theory Coloured Petri Nets},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-319-94965-9_10}
    }
    
  • Maria Villapol
    William Liu
    Jairo Gutierrez
    Junaid Qadir
    Steven Gordon
    Jin Tan
    Luca Chiaraviglio
    Jinsong Wu
    Wenjun Zhang
    Year: 2018
    A Sustainable Connectivity Model of the Internet Access Technologies in Rural and Low-Income Areas
    SMARTGIFT
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-94965-9_10
Maria Villapol1,*, William Liu1,*, Jairo Gutierrez1,*, Junaid Qadir2,*, Steven Gordon3,*, Jin Tan4,*, Luca Chiaraviglio5,*, Jinsong Wu6,*, Wenjun Zhang1,*
  • 1: Auckland University of Technology
  • 2: Information Technology University
  • 3: Central Queensland University
  • 4: China Jiliang University
  • 5: University of Rome Tor Vergata
  • 6: Universidad de Chile
*Contact email: maria.villapol@aut.ac.nz, william.liu@aut.ac.nz, jairo.gutierrez@aut.ac.nz, junaid.qadir@itu.edu.pk, s.d.gordon@cqu.edu.au, tanjin@cjlu.edu.cn, luca.chiaraviglio@gmail.com, wujs@ieee.org, wzhang@aut.ac.nz

Abstract

The Internet has evolved as a critical booster for the economic, social and technical development of human society. Almost half of the world’s population is unfortunately missing out due to the lack of access to the Internet. Such users are mainly those living in rural and low-income areas. Various strategies and approaches for improving the Internet’s accessibility are available, each with a different set of benefits, costs, and risks. It is important to choose solutions from these feasible options that promise to promote the efficiency as well as the sustainability of the ‘Internet Ecosystem’. In this paper, we propose a new model of that integrates three factors (affordability, social shareability, and geographical network coverage) that must be considered in the selection and design of Internet access solutions. In addition, we develop a hypergraph-based network graph solution that illustrates the relationship among the three factors. Then, we use Coloured Petri Nets (CPNs) to model and simulate the possible Internet access solutions and also interplay those three factors to study how they impact the overall network connectivity performance. Our initial results have revealed how sustainable Internet connectivity behaves as a function of the affordability, social interaction, and geographical network coverage and investigates how these factors could be leveraged to provide different network connectivity and Internet access solutions.