1 / 44

The CATER Initiative Cost-Effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Regions

The CATER Initiative Cost-Effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Regions. Lakshminarayanan Subramanian Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences New York University A joint effort with researchers from Courant Institute, NYU School of Medicine, NYU Wagner School of Public Policy.

galeno
Download Presentation

The CATER Initiative Cost-Effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Regions

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. The CATER InitiativeCost-Effective Appropriate Technologies for Emerging Regions Lakshminarayanan Subramanian Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences New York University A joint effort with researchers from Courant Institute, NYU School of Medicine, NYU Wagner School of Public Policy

  2. The CATER Lab Mission: Develop low-cost and appropriate Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for improving essential services in developing regions around the world • Focus Application Areas • Communications • Healthcare • Micro-finance • Education

  3. The CATER team • Healthcare and Medical Education • Mary Ann Hopkins • Brian Levine • Technology • NYU: • Lakshmi Subramanian • Jinyang Li • Yann Lecun • External collaborators: • Eric Brewer(Berkeley) • Tapan Parikh(Berkeley) • Micro-finance • Jonathan Morduch • Tapan Parikh • Developmental Economics • Yaw Nyarko

  4. Why ICTD Research? • Development Theories • Sachs: Give Aid • Easterly: $50 trillion – nothing much to show • Prahlad: Bottom of the pyramid • Empower Rural Markets (Amartya Sen) • 3-4 billion people with per-capita < US$2,000/year • Could swell to 6-8 billion over the next 25 years • Most live in rural villages or urban slums and shanty towns—movement towards urbanization • Hard to reach, disorganized, and local markets

  5. ICT: A Big Missing Piece • Communications • Awareness, access to external world, phone calls • Healthcare • “Where there is No Doctor?”: Rural healthcare system • Telemedicine/consultation • Continuing Medical Education for Health-workers • Low-cost diagnostic tools • Finance • Microfinance audit, insurance schemes • Education • Educational modules, distance learning • Others • Agriculture, Commerce, Supply chain and E-governance

  6. Network connectivity is key! Traditional wire-line connectivity solutions are not economically viable! Potential options Develop new low-cost connectivity solution! Leverage existing low-bandwidth wireless solutions Cellular, Satellite, CDMA450, WiMax Intermittent links are a fact of life Budget constrained links SMS Power outages Physical transportation links 6

  7. Connectivity options Type of Network Connectivity High b/w (5-10 Mbps) WiLDNet Low b/w (10-80 Kbps) GPRS, Satellite, CDMA, WiMax Intermittent Low b/w Usage constraint SMS Intermittent High delay Bus, Postal network Telemedicine, Distance Learning, Education, Video Teleconsultation, IP Telephony, Web and Cellphone based services Cell-phone Services for Finance Supply Chain Health care Rural Cafes Rural ATMs Bulk content Distribution

  8. Focus Areas • High bandwidth low-cost connectivity • WiRE architecute: An alternative to Cellular • WiLDNet: Wifi-based Long Distance Networks • Multi-Radio Mesh networks • Extending the Web to Rural Areas • Rural Café: Web Access over Intermittent Networks • SMS Find: SMS Search • Contextual Search Portals • Intermittent Mobile Applications • Cell phone based Medical Records • SmartTrack: Drug Tracking System • ATMosphere: Intermittent Rural ATMs

  9. Need for Economic viability • Challenges • Low user densities • Low purchasing power • Satellite • $15K installation + $3K per month /Mbps • Cellular/ WiMax • High Opex. 5-25 cents/min • Wireline solutions • Non starter

  10. Need a new connectivity solution Operational Expenditure is very high for Cellular/WiMax Fiber/WiMax is the least economically viable

  11. WiRE Architecture

  12. Architectural components • Point-to-point WiLDNet links • Point-to-multipoint distribution links • Multi-radio mesh links • A large local cache at each node • Mobile devices as end-points • Why? – 40% rural users own a cellphone in Africa!!!

  13. Challenges • Physical layer • Steerable antennas, better radios, 802.11n? • MAC layer • Unified MAC • Network layer • Naming, Addressing, QoS, routing • Robustness • Power, maintenance • Application layer • Security, End-to-end performance

  14. Overall vision • WiRE architecture – a replacement to the cellular architecture • Significantly lower cost • Much higher bandwidth • Focused coverage • Significantly lower power • Intermittent operations • Economically viable!

  15. WiFi-based Long Distance Networks • WiLD links use standard 802.11 radios • Longer range up to 150km • Directional antennas (24dBi) • Line of Sight (LOS) • Why choose WiFi: • Low cost of $500/node • Volume manufacturing • No spectrum costs • Customizable using open-source drivers • Good datarates • 11Mbps (11b), 54Mbps (11g)

  16. Routers used: (a) Linksys WRT54GL, (b) PC Engines Wrap Boards, Costs: (a) $50, (b) $140 AirJaldi Network • Tibetan Community • WiLD links + APs • Links 10 – 40 Kms • Achieve 4 – 5 Mbps • VoIP + Internet • 10,000 users

  17. Routers used: PC Engines Wrap boards, 266 Mhz CPU, 512 MB Cost: $140 Aravind Eye Hospital Network • South India • Tele-ophthalmology • All WiLD links • Links 1 – 15 Kms long • Achieve 4 – 5 Mbps • Video-conferencing • 3000 consultations/month

  18. New World Record – 382 Kms Pico El Aguila, Venezuela Elev: 4200 meters

  19. Overall Impact • Both networks financially sustainable • 50000 patients/year being scaled to 500000 patients/year • Over 3000 thousand patients have recovered sight

  20. Multi-radio Mesh Networks • Goal: Can we improve wireless throughput using multi-radio mesh networks? • Challenges: • Radio separation constraints • Nodes are very small • Solving routing and channel assignment together • Intra-path interference • Channel losses and highly fluctuating link behavior • Distributed operation

  21. Our multi-radio node • Small nodes • Highly varying link qualities

  22. Key Idea

  23. Our Indoor Testbed • NSC Geode Processors, 128MB RAM, 1GB Flash • Implemented on the Click Modular Router • Patched Madwifi 0.9.3.3

  24. Focus Areas • High bandwidth low-cost connectivity • WiREarchitecute: An alternative to Cellular • WiLDNet: Wifi-based Long Distance Networks • Multi-Radio Mesh networks • Extending the Web to Rural Areas • Rural Café: Web Access over Intermittent Networks • SMS Find: SMS Search • Contextual Search Portals • Intermittent Mobile Applications • Cell phone based Medical Records • SmartTrack: Drug Tracking System • ATMosphere: Intermittent Rural ATMs

  25. Rural Cafes • We Search over intermittent links? • A typical search today involves 4-8 queries! • Can we do web search in one round? • An Intermittent proxy based solution • Change the query interface • Specify all that you know about what you are searching for • Intermittent proxy issues multiple queries, prefetches and bundles response pages • Local proxy enables search within retrieved bundle • Under deployment in Amrita University, India

  26. RuralCafe Basic Idea Local Area Network Internet Intermittent Link Remote Proxy Local Proxy Web Servers Clients

  27. RuralCafe Search Interface

  28. SMSFind • SMS based Contextual Web Search • Google SMS ,Yahoo Onesearch restricted to fixed contexts • SMSFind features • 140 byte useful information extraction engine • Contextual extractors • Works for arbitrary contexts

  29. Contextual Search Portals • How do we setup malaria.google.com? • A portal to search all information about malaria! • Uses of Contextual Portals • Offline web search • Packing the Relevant Web in a Hard Disk • Health portals • Rethinking page-rank within a context?

  30. Focus Areas • High bandwidth low-cost connectivity • WiREarchitecute: An alternative to Cellular • WiLDNet: Wifi-based Long Distance Networks • Multi-Radio Mesh networks • Extending the Web to Rural Areas • Rural Café: Web Access over Intermittent Networks • SMS Find: SMS Search • Contextual Search Portals • Intermittent Mobile Applications • Cell phone based Medical Records • SmartTrack: Drug Tracking System • ATMosphere: Intermittent Rural ATMs

  31. Cellphone explosion! • 50-80% coverage in many parts of Africa • 100 million subscribers in India, 200 million in China and growing at 20% • Grameen Phone model • Use a SIM and not a cellphone! • Calling rates are still incredibly high in Africa!

  32. Lightweight Mobile Databases • Need for Tele-consultation • Where there is No Doctor? • Health-workers in the field use cell-phones to enter health records • Need a distributed database synchronization/search mechanism which works over SMS-links • Lightweight Cell-phone based medical record system • Example: CD4 History DB for AIDS patients • Constrained Databases (fields+queries) • Semantic Compression of DB records • Records are SMS-updatable • Privacy + Security Challenges

  33. SmartTrack • Two big problems with ARV Therapy Programs • Drug theft and counterfeit drugs • Patient adherence • SmartTrack • Use Cell phones to track flow of drugs • Tag medication bottles with Smart Tags • Patients report consumption using SMS • User Interface Challenges • User Studies + Initial testing in Ghana, South Africa

  34. Cell-phone based Microfinance • Pitfalls of Existing Microfinance Models • High transaction costs • Corruption • The Branchless Banking Model • Use programmable cell-phones to authenticate transactions • Outsource loan recollection to shop-keepers • Provide SIM cards to shopkeepers and loan-takers • Secure repayment receipts using SMS • Benefits: Reduce transaction costs and corruption

  35. ATMosphere • Rural ATMs over mobile SMS • ATMosphere • Offline authentication • Redistribution of balances • Cash availability • Minimal risk of cheating/overdraft • Results from Uganda model • 99% cash availability • Usage costs of 18 cents/user/year • Up to 10% cash availability in offline mode

  36. Questions? Thank you!

  37. Distance to Clinic

  38. Literacy

  39. Need translators

  40. Age distribution

  41. Challenges • Prohibitive cost of smartphones • Limited data communication infrastructure • Cost of communication • Language • Illiteracy

  42. Motivation • Maintaining accountability in the supply chain • Tracking patient adherence and symptoms • Cellphones as a healthcare platform

  43. Deployment

  44. Results • Elimination of intra-path interference leads to multi-hop throughputs comparable with single-hop throughputs • Having multiple gateways greatly improves spatial frequency reuse, leading to high overall throughput • Load and short-time-scale link variance is very important to consider when evaluating a link • Routes and channels are stable, under ROMA

More Related