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In today's knowledge-based economy, issues concerning equitable access to telecommunication services and their quality remain an important public policy focus. Wireline broadband Internet brings a significant expense of installation and maintenance, especially in less densely populated rural and remote areas. The rural, sparsely populated areas of southern Illinois are considered the broadband periphery and are underserved in terms of equitable access to high speed Internet. This study explores utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a tool to identify relevant local obstructions ("clutter") in the development of a more reliable, cost effective metrics for the deployment of wireless towers. After performing extensive quality control on tower coordinates obtained from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which were only 47% accurate, a spatial model to represent and analyze wireless broadband infrastructure and demand in the twenty-one county southern Illinois study region was developed. The key factors extracted for wireless broadband propagation are the land cover surrounding the tower, elevation and slope of the terrain, and tower height. Geographically weighted regression analysis was used to determine typical characteristics of users of wireless technology, with income, age, and education having the most significant effect. According to Census data for the year 2000, 33,910 of the 174,959 households in southern Illinois have poor or no wireless coverage. Based on the results of the study and policy recommendations, wireless broadband technologies are viable solutions to help bridge the broadband gap in southern Illinois and rural America.

Many applications need the ability to do real-time notification when events occur. Often the people who need to be kept aware of events are in a remote location. This paper looks at a bi-directional gateway between networked computers and the GSM short message service. The gateway is implemented as a web service, and uses the Simple Object Access Protocol to facilitate data communication. The service interacts with a database in order to facilitate retrieval of sent or received messages, as well as provide accounting abilities. It is intended as a practical proof-of-concept application demonstrating some ofdemonstrating some of the capabilities of the Simple Object Access Protocol.

The heterogeneous deployment of small cells (e.g., femtocells) in the coverage area of the traditional macrocells is a cost-efficient solution to provide network capacity, indoor coverage and green communications towards sustainable environments in the future fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. However, the unplanned and ultra-dense deployment of femtocells with their uncoordinated operations will result in technical challenges such as severe interference, a significant increase in total energy consumption, unfairness in radio resource sharing and inadequate quality of service provisioning. Therefore, there is a need to develop efficient radio resource management algorithms that will address the above-mentioned technical challenges. The aim of this thesis is to develop and evaluate new efficient radio resource management algorithms that will be implemented in cognitive radio enabled femtocells to guarantee the economical sustainability of broadband wireless communications and users' quality of service in terms of throughput and fairness. Cognitive Radio (CR) technology with the Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) and stochastic process are the key technologies utilized in this research to increase the spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency at limited interference. This thesis essentially investigates three research issues relating to the efficient radio resource management: Firstly, a self-organizing radio resource management algorithm for radio resource allocation and interference management is proposed. The algorithm considers the effect of imperfect spectrum sensing in detecting the available transmission opportunities to maximize the throughput of femtocell users while keeping interference below pre-determined thresholds and ensuring fairness in radio resource sharing among users. Secondly, the effect of maximizing the energy efficiency and the spectrum efficiency individually on radio resource management is investigated. Then, an energy-efficient radio resource management algorithm and a spectrum-efficient radio resource management algorithm are proposed for green communication, to improve the probabilities of spectrum access and further increase the network capacity for sustainable environments. Also, a joint maximization of the energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency of the overall networks is considered since joint optimization of energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency is one of the goals of 5G wireless networks. Unfortunately, maximizing the energy efficiency results in low performance of the spectrum efficiency and vice versa. Therefore, there is an investigation on how to balance the trade-off that arises when maximizing both the energy efficiency and the spectrum efficiency simultaneously. Hence, a joint energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency trade-off algorithm is proposed for radio resource allocation in ultra-dense heterogeneous networks based on orthogonal frequency division multiple access. Lastly, a joint radio resource allocation with adaptive modulation and coding scheme is proposed to minimize the total transmit power across femtocells by considering the location and the service requirements of each user in the network. The performance of the proposed algorithms is evaluated by simulation and numerical analysis to demonstrate the impact of ultra-dense deployment of femtocells on the macrocell networks. The results show that the proposed algorithms offer improved performance in terms of throughput, fairness, power control, spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency. Also, the proposed algorithms display excellent performance in dynamic wireless environments.

With the continual challenges associated with reducing aircraft engine noise, there is need for acoustic liner configurations that target broadband performance. This thesis experimentally and analytically investigates passive noise control methods to improve broadband frequency attenuation through various acoustic liner designs. The inclusion of acoustic metamaterials within these liners is examined and optimized. The metamaterials studied consist of resonant and non-resonant materials which include porous foams, microperforated plates (MPP), and embedded aluminum masses. Through finite element analysis, the understanding of the physics behind acoustics as well as aeroacoustics inspire their design. Sensitivity studies on the overall liner shape, facesheet properties, poro-elastic material properties, MPP's, as well as size and placement of embedded masses assist in successfully achieving broadband attenuation. Within the finite element study, an optimization tool will provide additional assistance in quantifying critical system parameters within the designs by minimizing the sum of the transmitted sound intensity over the design frequency bandwidth and hence maximizing attenuation. Broadband frequency absorption and attenuation is successfully achieved within the frequency range of 400-2600 Hz through the design of a varying depth optimized acoustic liner as well as a metamaterial-inspired liner. / Master of Science

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between gigabit broadband network penetration (GBNP) and the economic well-being in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) in the United States. The literature highlights the colloquial examples of how gigabit connectivity has impacted MSA economies, the governance structure, and the economic indicators of a local economic health. Variables in the analysis were separated into four categories: time, geographic, economic, and employment. Data was collected from the FCC Form 477, US Census Bureau ACS 5 year estimates, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis between the years 2011 and 2014. A descriptive analysis explored the statistical relationships between the selected factors. Results showed that the time variable, selected economic variables, and selected employment variables all show positive relationships with GBNP. The study offers the opportunity for future research to build off of in order to comprehensively answer the question about the relationship between economic well-being and GBNP. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The Community Broadband Investment Act, introduced in the Georgia legislature in 2012 and 2013 is a reflection of a broader national debate over the role of government investment in broadband infrastructure. The bill would limit local governments' ability to invest in broadband infrastructure for their communities because of arguments that government entry into the telecommunications sector crowds-out private competition, does not serve the public adequately, and lacks a comprehensive business model or best practices. A closer look at the history of utility regulation and various economic perspectives on the proper government role in utility provision reveals that government has had an extensive historical role in utility infrastructure investment and regulation, and several economic doctrines support the conclusion that government can be helpful in facilitating effective broadband service to their communities. Case studies of different models of municipal broadband networks in Georgia reveal that government entry can facilitate private sector competition, often provides quality service, and has a set of best practices. The success of municipal broadband reveals an evolution in the approach to telecommunications regulation from a regulated monopoly approach to a public-private cooperation approach which considers public participation with private entities on a dynamic scale. Government-entry into the broadband market was a rational decision for several Georgia communities due to their unique set of circumstances, and while municipal broadband may not be the answer to many communities' problems with meeting public demand, communities should be allowed to maintain flexibility in their decision-making about how to best serve their residents, effectively allowing them to decide which combination of public and private advantages they can leverage to meet the demand of their communities in relation to their unique local characteristics.

This dissertation investigates the capacity required by an internet application in tandem with the network connection type (dial-up or broadband). An internet user’s experience in accessing various types of applications with either high bandwidth or low bandwidth is examined in a consumer choice model of broadband adoption. A consumer implicitly values the time-saving benefits derived from a higher speed internet connection used to access a particular internet application, and compares those utility benefits to the higher price of high speed connection services in making the decision to shift to broadband or remain with a dial-up connection. We find that using broadband rather than dial-up to run bandwidth intensive applications presents considerable gains in the implicit value of time saved. Assuming that internet users are rational utility maximizing agents, a logit model is used to calculate the likelihood of broadband adoption as a function primarily of the nature/type of the internet applications (“elastic or inelastic”). While the empirical results are generally consistent with our hypothesis that consumers are more likely to subscribe to broadband if they regularly run applications that are bandwidth intensive, the results vary somewhat by model specification, and are potentially sensitive to controlling for endogeneity. Correcting for endogeneity remains the major challenge in extending this research. Research Question: What is the relationship between consumer valuation of the net benefits of using bandwidth intensive applications and the adoption of broadband internet? Hypothesis: The less a consumer requires bandwidth intensive applications; the lower is the likelihood of switching from a low level bandwidth internet service like dial-up to a high level bandwidth internet type like broadband. While this relationship may appear obvious, it has not been systematically investigated or measured, nor has its importance in affecting lags in broadband adoption been adequately appreciated.

Service Requirements and Strategy of Broadband Cable Networks

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / TERIS is a CTEIP (Central Test and Evaluation Investment program) project to provide wideband communications facilities between major ranges and laboratories economically and reliably. TERIS uses existing modern technology, off-the-shelf hardware and software, and leased commercial telephone facilities, Nine ranges and two laboratory facilities have been surveyed to determine costs and feasibility of connecting the TERIS. An initial three-node network is planned to be operating in early 1994.