Fixed broadband wireless access is a promising technology allowing

Internet service providers to expend their customer base in sparsely populated

rural areas. Because the size of the target service area is humongous, relay in-

frastructure is essential. Installing and maintaining this relay infrastructure is

the main cost associated with such networks. Thus, we develop an optimization

framework which computes the minimum number of relay stations and their cor-

responding channel confi gurations such that a pre-specifi ed subscribers’ traffi c

demand can be satisfi ed. Since the problem is a mixed-integer program, we pro-

pose an effi cient optimization algorithm to compute the optimal solution in a

reasonable amount of time. Our numerical results show that by using a few relay

stations in a rural community, broadband Internet access can be established in a

cost effective manner.