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arXiv · 2607.21310

Empowering Rural Areas with Multi-radio Microwave Backhaul Supported by Digital Twin for 5G IAB-based FWA

Abstract

For digital inclusion, high-capacity Internet access should be provided to rural areas to support a range of services and applications. Due to the high operating costs of fiber-optic deployment, Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) is becoming a more attractive internet solution for rural areas. However, 5G FWA is a one-hop solution with limited coverage. A multi-hop solution is needed for wider rural coverage. This work considers a unified solution combining long-haul microwave, 5G Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), and FWA to provide a multi-hop network for extended coverage and high network capacity in rural areas. A key challenge for such a network is that energy consumption increases with the number of hops, a problem that has been overlooked in the existing literature. To address this, we propose energy-efficiency microwave backhaul for IAB-based FWA as the Physical Twin (PT). We develop an energy-efficient strategy to optimize radio start-up, serving, sleeping, and wake-up states for microwave backhaul connecting 5G IAB-based FWA serving rural areas. By operating the network at reduced capacity during low utilization, we aim to minimize energy consumption. Then, we present a Digital Twin (DT) of PT to improve its performance. We solve the formulated optimization problem using deep Q-learning in DT and the optimization solver in PT. The simulation results show that our approach satisfies the data rate requirements while reducing energy consumption.

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BibTeXRIS

Anselme Ndikumana, Kim Khoa Nguyen, Adel Larabi, Mohamed Cheriet. 2026-07-26. Empowering Rural Areas with Multi-radio Microwave Backhaul Supported by Digital Twin for 5G IAB-based FWA. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21310

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