PAN ASIA ICT R&D Grants Programme - UTM

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1. 1. Wir ir ireless ir eless Inter Internet Inter net P PPost P ost Of Office Of ice (India) (India) Project Budget Grant Awarded: US$ 30,000 Project Purpose Solve the multitude of technical and system design issues that define a Wireless Internet Post Office (WIPO) capable of delivering digital access to the widest possible population at the lowest usage and capital cost. Project Objectives This project aims to couple advances in consumer electronics and digital communication to design a system that can provide text based communication to remote areas underserved by traditional communication infrastructure. Target Audience Villagers who want to contact relatives in distant locations; farmers who want pricing, access to markets, and advice on disease and pest control; small business owners who want access to distant markets; educators who want teaching materials; and medical and aid workers. Wireless Internet Post Office Project Output The main output of the project is the end-to-end design of a Wireless Internet Post Office capable of delivering textbased messaging services to remote villages through a mesh network of wireless relay stations. The research team designed, tested and documented the system components to enable others to build and deploy the system and replicate the model. IT engineers testing the wireless connection Hardware & Software Pentium III PC 128 MB RAM 40GB hard drive 10/100 Intel EEPro network adapter Internet connectivity 802.11b Cisco Aironet 350 Series WLAN cards Directional Yagi Antennae for the purpose of long-range communication between the various wireless-postoffices or relay stations, and PDAs. The mail server is sendmail-8.12.5-7 configured. Sendmail-doc-8.12.5-7.i386.rpm provides all the documentation for sendmail including the sendmail FAQ. Impact The project benefits the end users and all the people involved. The project also can turn villagers into entrepreneurs. The Project Team The team from the Indian Institute of Technology is led by Dr. Huzur Saran who specializes in Algorithms, as well as Wireless and High Speed Networking. A member of his team is Dr. B.N. Jain who is the co-founder of ERNET. The specialist consultants are Thomas G. Zimmerman from IBM Almaden, and Rajeev Shorey from IBM India. Contact Address Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 India. E-mail: saran@cse.iitd.ernet.in Website: http://genie.iitd.ernet.in/ wipo/ genie.iitd.ernet.in/wipo/ 8
Inf Infor Inf or orma or ma mation ma tion Ex Exchang Ex hang hange hang e Ser Services Ser vices to to Remote emote Indian Indian Villa illa illages illa es Villagers as the end-users, opening doors of opportunities Project Background Digital connectivity is a distant dream for the one-third of the world’s population living without electricity. Cost, lack of infrastructure, and the complexity of computer technology create a wide digital divide between networked and unconnected citizens. However, advancements in technology and the mass commercialization of handheld computers (PDAs) and wireless networking (WLAN) now offer the opportunity to break down these traditional barriers to digital communication. This project aims to couple advances in consumer electronics with an entrepreneurial model to foster the deployment of text based digital communication. The project team produced the end-to-end design of a Wireless Internet Post Office capable of delivering text-based messaging services to remote villages thorough a mesh network of wireless repeater stations. The team minimized cost and complexity by using off-the-shelf components. WLAN radios (802.11b) operating in the international licensefree band (2.4 GHz) combined with directional antennas provide longrange the needed inexpensive wireless networking. Medical and aid workers, teachers and government employees can synchronize a low-cost PDA at a wireless repeater station, much like dropping off and picking up mail at a post office, then bring the PDAs into the field. Economic issues relevant to a rural, agrarian society such as current, fair market prices of various goods can potentially revolutionize a wiredvillager’s economic standing in society. Informing villages of weather forecasts can now be done on a village-byvillage basis. This kind of information increases efficiency in the farming community, and it enables the masses to gain from advances in digital communication. Enterprising villagers who pur- chase a PDA can go into business as “scribes”, reading and writing e-mail to the illiterate and as “information workers”, providing crop and fertilizer pricing, pest and health alerts, and matching sellers with distant buyers. The project team design goal was to deliver reliable asynchronous text communication at a minimum cost with a strong emphasis on what is practical and most likely to succeed in the field. The project includes a system of Internet gateway components, a multitude of fixed wireless relay stations that form a mesh network, and PDAs synchronized with the wireless relay stations. The combination of roaming PDAs and stationary wireless synchronization stations is the least expensive and most flexible means to collect and disseminate information in developing countries. The project primarily supports text e-mail since a number of other messaging and query applications can be layered on top of the base e-mail application. However, since each wireless relay station is connected to the Internet gateway, the operators could offer a full range of Internet Directional Yagi antennas relaying information over long distances 9 Wireless Internet Post Office
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Page 45 and 46: How to apply for grants Information
Page 47: Published for the PanAsia ICT R&D G

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