The connectivity issues experienced by rural customers using mmWave-enabled augmented reality headsets are primarily due to the nature of mmWave technology and the characteristics of rural areas.
Contributing Factors to Connectivity Issues in Rural Areas
- Short Range of mmWave Signals : mmWave technology operates at very high frequencies, which results in a very short transmission range. This makes it difficult to provide broad coverage in sparsely populated rural areas where users are spread out over large distances.
- High Susceptibility to Obstruction : mmWave signals are easily blocked or weakened by obstacles such as trees, buildings, and even atmospheric conditions. Rural environments tend to have more natural obstacles (trees, hills) that can degrade the signal quality.
- Insufficient Cell Tower Density : Effective mmWave coverage requires a dense network of cell towers or small cells to maintain connectivity. Rural areas typically lack this high density of cell infrastructure due to the high costs and logistical challenges of deploying many towers over large areas with low population density. This results in inadequate support for mmWave connectivity.
- Network Infrastructure Limitations : Rural cell towers may not be designed or equipped to handle mmWave frequencies as effectively as urban towers, leading to limited coverage and capacity issues.
Overall, the key issue is that mmWave technology is best suited for high- density urban and suburban environments where cell towers are closely spaced. In contrast, rural areas have widely spaced towers and physical terrain challenges that reduce mmWave connectivity performance for customers using devices like augmented reality headsets.
This combination of mmWave's physical limitations and rural network infrastructure gaps leads to the connectivity issues encountered by rural customers. Hence, the primary contributor to the connectivity problems is the lack of enough cell locations (cell towers or small cells) to support the short-range mmWave signals in rural areas , compounded by signal blockage and obstructions common in such environments.
