Rural broadband deployment using low-band 5G and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) technologies presents persistent RF engineering challenges arising from terrain complexity, vegetation density, and variable propagation conditions. Despite 42. 45 billion in federal investment through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, provider-reported coverage data frequently overstates actual delivered service because it is derived from propagation models rather than post-deployment field measurements. This paper proposes the Propagation-Aware RF Optimization Framework (PAROF), a six-component closed-loop methodology integrating terrain-based path profiling using ITU-R P. 1812-7, link budget validation using ITU-R P. 530-18, Monte Carlo reliability simulation based on the 3GPP TR 38. 901 Rural Macrocell channel model, and KPI-driven post-deployment field validation. The framework is proposed based on preliminary engineering evidence drawn from four multi-site deployments including a 29. 79 km XPIC microwave link with 99. 9971% model-predicted availability supported by 72-hour field monitoring, a dual-band 15/80 GHz backhaul link delivering 300 Mbps and 2 Gbps respectively, and Nokia AirScale 5G RAN commissioning across 114 sites. Analysis of FCC Broadband Data Collection data for Okanogan County, Washington, where only 37. 02% of locations meet the BEAD-served threshold of 100/20 Mbps, illustrates the national-scale application of the framework. Preliminary deployment evidence suggests that PAROF-guided workflows can support RSL prediction accuracy within approximately 2-3 dB in the documented cases, with further U. S. -based validation needed for low-band 5G/FWA deployments.
Shalyne Kirui (Mon,) studied this question.