Next generation communication technologies: Wireless mesh network for rural connectivity

Abstract

The opportunities and challenges of traditional communication technologies in the area of rural communication calls for a change in perspective and usual trends of wire line and wireless connectivity. In the quest to improve rural communication with the urban market, use of smart hand-held devices and easy-to-deploy wireless connectivity is catalytic according to our findings. To eradicate digital divide, we have presented a holistic approach to overcome the challenges of language barrier and information asymmetry. This paper provides an insight of $100 tablets, an interactive hand-held communication device, which allows low-literate farmers to share their information onto the network. These smart communication devices stay connected to the global network through the easy deployment of wireless mesh network (WMN) in a rural area. QoS constraints are imposed in the WMN setup and significant observation has been made regarding spectrum resource utilization at every hop by achieving certain level of cognition at the user end.