Sensor networks to monitor quality of life in rural area

With technological advances, a new area of technology called “Sensor Network” has emerged, which promises to touch many aspects of our life and has wide-ranging applications. Sensor Networks is a collection of sensor nodes, which have the capability of sensing, processing and communication. They are cheap, small in size and consume very less power. They can communicate with each other and process the sensed data locally and cooperatively. In this paper, we examine the possibility of Sensor Networks being used to monitor various parameters, which affect quality of life in rural India and thereby provide an opportunity to improve the quality of life. Quality of life of human beings in rural area is integrated with that of domestic animal health, soil and water quality and plant/crop health. We examine the possibility of setting up of sensor networks to monitor these aspects so as to provide a detailed set of information to the residents as well as planners. This can be supplemented by linking together information obtained from the medical centers to correlate the prevalence of certain disease with environmental factors. While it may be premature to deploy this technology on wider scale, early research and development work will allow us to focus better on the needs of the application and deploy them as and when it becomes economically feasible. We are developing a 100-node modular sensor network testbed for this purpose and will have the flexibility to try and optimize the nodes for various applications.