Rural broadband initiative is happening in a big wave across the world. Canada, being a diverse country has a specific Internet reachability problem due to population being sparse. It is economically not viable to bring fiber to each and every house in Canada. It is not economically viable to connect every household through satellites either. Broadband Internet over wireless networks is a good option where Internet is brought over fiber to a point of presence and moved to houses over wireless.

EION is actively working in Ontario and Newfoundland to make rural broadband a possibility. Wireless networking in rural areas in Canada is a challenge in itself due to weather, terrain and accessibility. Real-time constraints such as weather, water and foliage do alter the maximum capacity of the wireless pipe. In addition the usage pattern of the houses, especially real-time video that require fast response time, require adequate planning.

This is becoming very critical as almost 80% of the traffic seems to be video related due to popularity of applications such as Netflix, Youtube and Shomi.  Intelligence in wireless rural broadband networks are a necessity to bring good quality voice, video and data reliably. Optimization in system and network level using heuristics and artificial intelligence techniques based on big data analysis of video packets is paramount to enable smooth performing broadband rural networks.

In this project, we will be analyzing the big data of video packets in rural broadband networks in Ontario and Newfoundland and design optimized network design and architecture to bring reliable video services over constrained rural broadband wireless networks.

Industry Partner(s):EION Inc.

Academic Institution:University of Ottawa

Academic Researcher: Amiya Nayak

Co-PI Name: Octavia Dobre

Focus Areas: Cities, Digital Media, Energy

Platforms: Cloud