Researcher Aims to Boost Rural Access to 5g, Harden Wireless Network Security and Help Conceive 6G
Look closely at any mobile service provider’s map of nationwide 5G coverage, and you’ll notice huge swaths of the country — rural areas — don’t have 5G service.
A new three-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation will support a University of Kansas researcher’s work to improve the design of 5G connectivity and computing for rural areas — communities with unique network demands based around agricultural and community patterns of living and working.
It’s one of a trio of new NSF-funded projects to be headed by Taejoon Kim, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science and researcher at the Institute for Information Sciences (I2S) at KU.
“The 5G network system was developed by companies with a profit motive,” Kim said. “Because of this economic incentive, all these 5G networks have been deployed in urban areas, but people living in rural areas still need to pay subscription for their cellphones, including for 5G service. But they haven’t benefited as much as people in urban areas — from the spread of information, the faster speeds, the ability to transfer large amounts of data that really transform our life at a different level.