10. CLOSENET—Mesh Wi-Fi in Areas of Remote Connectivity

The availability of high-speed network connectivity in Indian villages can have significant socioeconomic impact. This can have a positive influence on many aspects of development such as telemedicine, smart agriculture, and education among others. In this paper, we describe our attempts to develop and deploy CLOSENET, a wireless mesh network (WMN) in rural areas facing insufficient network coverage. The network topology is chosen based on a case study on a specific village (C.K.Pura in Tumkur, Karnataka), taking several constraints into account such as terrain interference, population of users, and available power sources. We analyze factors such as normalized routing load, packet delivery ratio, data throughput, and data latency in order to demonstrate the efficiency, reliability, and durability of the network through a simulation model developed using the NS2 simulation tool. Advanced reactive routing protocols such as the ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) have been chosen in order to guarantee good performance in terms of scalability, reliability, throughput, load balancing, congestion control, and efficiency. Furthermore, the terrain is mapped onto an appropriate attenuation model implemented in NS2; this helps decide the throughput and latencies at each node, as well as the number of nodes required to obtain acceptable data transfer rates. The network is self-adaptive in nature. The work presented in the paper is a part of a planned long-term initiative to develop connectivity in remote areas, which will have significant benefits to society.