Ever thought why WiFi has found maximum usage in recent years? With 3G and LTE network available, the trend is vastly moving towards usage of smart phones and tablets. Gone are the days when the basic essential needs were food, cloth and residence. The fourth essential thing has become probably most needed thing with increasing affordability. This is connectivity. But still a large proportion of population lives in rural India and their earning do not allow them the privilege of connectivity.
Passive RFID tag is the most potential tool which can be a cost effective solution with investment from the nation. Much needed application and direct need would be tracking of kids, pets, old aged and physically/mentally challenged people. Each of these person or pet would carry this passive RFID tag which does not need power which lower cost and greater life durability. The nation would have installed RFID receivers all over the village / city and each of these receivers would be equipped with GPS and mobile GPRS or Ethernet connectivity. As and when any RFID tag holder passes through, the unique code would be indentified and the current location would be updated onto the nationalized data center.
Let us consider a scenario of high tech city with clusters of RFID receivers all over the city; no parents would be worried about location of their kin. Similarly, in a village where RFID receivers are not installed, a police patrol vehicle equipped with RFID receiver would keep making rounds around the village will once collect all the data and update the nationalized data server at one go. A lost child or a pet or a person with health problem uses this RFID tag to get in touch with their family or owner and vice-versa by knowing the latest location. These are few of the application of such a connected world with low cost and affordability for each person who either lives in metro or in a village.
Installments of such receivers are a challenge cost wise. Yet even there are only few of them located at main points like police station, main entrance road of the village, hospitals, schools, etc; the data collected can be used to know the last location of the RFID tag holder. Yet another implementation is tracking the mobile phones. These days mobile phones are available for lower cost as low as Rs 700 which is lucrative to rural India. Even child and old aged person are having personal mobile phones. At the same time, terrorist have become very active through mobile devices. Every terrorist attacks were later investigated to have used mobile phones using multiple SIMs which can’t be traced easily except for the last location. Hence a nationalized data center for tracing the mobile phone where-about and maintain the history of their locations is much needed. It is time that security system is boosted.
A solution to this is equipping all the BTS with GPS unit and development of technology that can read the power of the mobile phone devices relative location to BTS. It might require adding some parameter to RACH (Random Access Channel or RACH is a point-to-point logical channel in the uplink direction. It is sent by the mobile as a request for making a call or as a response to a paging to the mobile. It consists of the identity of the mobile and location area details as available in SIM) information to read the power radio dissipated to lock with BTS. This power fundamentally changes with the distance from the BTS. The BTS would then transmit the mobile power information along with its GPS location. The centralized mobile tracking server would then refer to the past location of the mobile phone from the data server and with current data would calculate the approximate absolute location of the mobile device. This updated location of the mobile would be then pushed to the centralized national data server.
The access to this data would be given to the needy to tracking their kin or relative suffering from critical health problem. The investigation bureau should have direct access to this data and they can track any suspicious number or person. This will indeed boost the national security.
