CSIRO is developing wireless technologies to bring broadband internet access to rural and remote areas of Australia.
High performance fast broadband is critical for economic growth and social equity in Australia.
As more services, transactions and interactions occur online, it is important that as much of the population as possible has available the option of broadband internet access.
Getting broadband connectivity to Australia's rural and remote areas is difficult because the population is sparsely scattered over a wide area. Current terrestrial wireless technologies have limited capacity and coverage and satellite technologies are expensive and provide limited data rates.
CSIRO has made significant breakthroughs in developing long range wireless access technologies at broadband rates.
CSIRO technology
CSIRO is developing two technologies aimed at bringing broadband internet access to remote areas of Australia: wireless access and wireless backhaul.
Our wireless access technology exploits existing television broadcasting infrastructure to deliver broadband services.
It is designed to provide higher capacity than other emerging wireless broadband technologies. We aim to achieve data rates similar to optic fibre along with low latency (download delay).
CSIRO is developing two technologies aimed at bringing broadband internet access to remote areas of Australia.
Our system uses beam forming (focusing) techniques to send a targeted signal. Beam forming is more efficient, and the beam can be transmitted over a longer distance, than a signal spread across the entire alloted spectrum. To receive the signal, users would connect a wireless modem to their existing TV antenna.
The second innovation is wireless backhaul technology. Backhauls are the means of joining isolated sub-networks to the main network.
Building on patented technologies, our wireless backhaul has the potential to provide performance approaching that of a fibre link with data rates of many gigabits per second.
This technology is ideal for reaching far-flung communities and could also be a cost-effective alternative to fibre backhauls for regional centres. (Microwave links currently offer much less than that (150 megabits per second) over a 10–20 kilometre range.)
Current activities
Proof-of-concept trials for the wireless access technology are currently underway at our lab in Marsfield, Sydney, Australia.
We are planning to run two small scale field trials in regional areas of Australia in 2010.
Outcomes
We are focused on providing high performance network connectivity to those Australians not served by existing technologies.
Broadband internet access supports the maintenance of economic growth and social equality in Australia as well as the opportunity for improved healthcare and education services.
Partners
We are working with the Australian industry and state and federal governments to develop the technology and gain the regulatory clearance and bandwidth allocation necessary to trial our system.
Read more about Broadband for Australia.
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