Abstract
Many rural areas along Spain do not have access to the Internet. Despite the huge spread of technology that has taken place during recent years, some rural districts and isolated villages have a lack of proper communication infrastructures. Moreover, these areas and the connected regions are notably experiencing a technological gap. As a consequence of this, the implementation of technological health solutions becomes impracticable in these zones where demographic conditions are especially particular. Thus, inhabitants over 65 suppose a large portion of such population, and many elderly people live alone at their homes. These circumstances also impact on local businesses which are widely related to the agricultural and livestock industry. Taking into account this situation, this paper proposes a solution based on an opportunistic network algorithm which enables the deployment of technological communication solutions for both elderly healthcare and livestock industrial activities in rural areas. This way, two applications are proposed: a presence detection platform for elderly people who live alone and an analytic performance measurement system for livestock. The algorithm is evaluated considering several simulations under multiple conditions, comparing the delivery probability, latency, and overhead outcomes with other well‐known opportunistic routing algorithms. As a result, the proposed solution quadruples the delivery probability of Prophet, which presents the best results among the benchmark solutions and greatly reduces the overhead regarding other solutions such as Epidemic or Prophet. This way, the proposed approach provides a reliable mechanism for the data transmission in these scenarios.
Highlights
Communication technologies have experienced an exponential spread in the last years
The increasing interest of users on the Internet has unleashed a big competition between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide coverage to as many areas as possible
The simulated scenario recreates a rural area with low connectivity, which reflects a village community and the surrounding roads
Summary
Communication technologies have experienced an exponential spread in the last years. The increasing interest of users on the Internet has unleashed a big competition between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide coverage to as many areas as possible. These numbers highlight an average increase of 12.98% per year, which is expected to continue growing in the decade. Regions like Extremadura, Castile and León, or Galicia constitute the lowest rates and the biggest “shadow surfaces” [1] These districts, where Internet infrastructures are minimal, are normally rural and isolated areas in which network operators are not interested in deploying their solutions due to the low benefits they acquire. Along the technology gap, rural areas face additional challenges like healthcare
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