The village base station

Cellular communications, including handsets and base stations, have become ubiquitous technologies throughout the developing and developed world. Roughly three billion users spend large portions of their income on these basic communications [1]. However, the remaining half of the world currently has limited access, in large part due to lack of network coverage. Some areas do not have a high enough population density to support a traditional cellular deployment. Other areas are too far from established infrastructure to make a deployment economically feasible. This leads to many rural areas where there is no network coverage at all.