Wireless data transfer device for Add-Drop Education System
Problem Description – An intellectual desert caused by lack of education
“Only the Educated are free.”
-Epictetus (Greek philosopher, 55AD – 135AD)
Education is considered to be an integral part of the development of an individual. An under-educated populace is a major setback to the development of any country, and it becomes impossible to enhance the standards of living within that country. A low literacy rate is a major setback for development, as the sum of the working capacity of the country’s populace is greatly reduced. Lack of literacy within a country could also result in the spread of poverty among the people of that country, which leads to problems such as extreme hunger, bad health and safety services and lack of environmental sustainability. In recognition of this important factor, better Primary Education for all has been named as one of the Millennium Development Goals set down by the United Nations.
One of the most persistent problems with regard to education is the lack of facilities to disperse educational information in a usable and satisfactory manner. Therefore those without basic information infrastructure such as access to internet due to the result of unsavory effects such as the Digital Divide are effectively cut off from the educational information they need to progress academically. Consequently, a veritable desert with regard to intellectualism is created in areas where the amount of information dispersal is low.
This project will be developed in conjunction with the Software Design project to develop an Add-Drop Education System and is targeted at building the wireless data transfer device required for its development. Therefore the technical problem for this project becomes the development of an effective data transfer device which is cost-effective.
Proposed Solution – Educational Information that can be had by all
The Add-Drop Education System, which has been entered under the Software Design category, is dedicated solely for the purpose of solving the problem of lack of literacy, and consequently all the problems caused by it. It uses wireless technology and centralized servers to seamlessly deliver educational information to students in rural schools who do not have access to the wider world of data. This project under the Embedded Development category is aimed at developing the Wireless Data Transfer Device required for the Add-Drop Education System.
The Add-Drop Education System uses an element of mass transit, namely, buses, to transfer data from the central server to rural schools with no wired access to the internet. This requires a wireless device which can communicate with the central server and with the local server installed at the rural school. Buses are used to bridge the distance gap between these two and therefore will be the delivery mechanism used to transfer the educational information. Therefore the wireless device installed on these buses requires a module which is able to transfer data from and to local servers via wireless technology and a storage module which will store the educational information. It is planned to build this wireless device using the eBox-3310A-MSJK embedded development device using a specifically developed Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 image as its operating system.
The need to use Embedded Development to power the solution
As mentioned above, the goal of this project is to develop a wireless device that can be outfitted on buses to transfer data to and fro between a central server and local servers installed in rural schools. It is a requirement of this device that it can intelligently categorize and store the educational information and queries for educational information submitted to it to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Add-Drop Education System. In order to accomplish this, the wireless device needs to have an intelligent operating system which can identify the type of data being submitted to it, and to identify individual servers which connect to it. It must also be able to categorically store the information being submitted for storage, to enable quick extraction of information by servers.
Today, embedded devices are more intelligent and capable of performing more functions by themselves than ever before. The eBox-3310A-MSJK embedded development device offers the capability to design intelligent embedded devices which run on images of the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system. Therefore it is possible to move more of the functionality required by a specific system, such as the Add-Drop Education System, in to the embedded device itself, requiring less activity from the other components of the overall system. This makes the overall system more efficient as embedded devices are capable of performing their functions efficiently. All the above stated functions can be included in the wireless device itself using embedded development; therefore the best method to develop the wireless data transfer device required for the Add-Drop Education System would be to deploy it as an Embedded Solution.
Hardware Architecture of the Wireless Data transfer device
The proposed Hardware is mainly based on eBox-3310A-MSJK manufactured by ICOP Technology Inc. The running Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 image for the eBox-3310A-MSJK can be built by using Platform-Builder and ICOP eBox3310A 60GS BSP (Board Support Package).
The eBox is deployed inside the bus and connects to the network of a school which has the connectivity infrastructure, i.e. access to the internet, to the main data server. The eBox then downloads data from the main data server (via the server within the school that has access to the internet) and transmits it to the local servers installed in rural schools via wireless network devices. At the same time, it processes the queries sent by the rural school’s server and uploads it to the application on the server in the school with internet access. This server will process the query and request the relevant data from the central server. The eBox will handle the streaming of data in the form of bit streams to and from servers. These streams will be identified according to source or destination and the relevant action taken.
The wireless 802.11g-compliant transmitter/receiver (ideally, a generic wireless card) will be attached to the COM port of the eBox. This will stream data to and from the eBox using wireless signals. The data will be supplied to the wireless transmitter/receiver in the form of streams of bits, which will be decoded via the eBox or the receiving server, according to which is at the receiving end of the data.
The data storage module in within the device which will be attached to the USB port of the eBox, will be used to store the data received from the servers in the schools with internet access and to store queries received from the servers installed at the rural schools. These two categories of data will be stored in different directories on the storage module, which will allow easy identification and data separation for the eBox and communicating servers. e.g. To submit queries, servers in rural schools need only access the directory containing queries, to receive educational information, it need only access the directory containing information. All information should be stored with relation to identification information to show where that information has come from. This can be done by the use of an identification number being assigned to each individual server, which will in turn uniquely identify the school to which it belongs.
Software Architecture of the Wireless Data Transfer device and how it relates to the overall Add-Drop Education System
The local servers installed at schools which use the Add-Drop Education System will always be broadcasting a wireless signal in search of a wireless data transfer device to connect to. Once a bus containing such a device comes within range of the server, the connection will be established and the relevant data transfer/query tasks will be carried out by the server. The image of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 included in the wireless data transfer device needs to be able to perform the following functions:
- Accept the incoming connection from both types of servers: those installed at schools with internet access, and those without access.
- Decode bit stream data received from servers, and encode data generated from the eBox into a bit stream for wireless transmission.
- Identify and categorize the different types of data, i.e. as queries and educational information, received by the wireless device and store them in the relevant directories in the storage module.
- Manage a database on the storage module which stores data in relation to the unique identification number of the server that owns that data.
- Select and transmit the relevant data as requested by the server.
As it can be deduced from the above, the software component installed in the local servers which use the Add-Drop Education System will be directly interfacing with the software running on the embedded wireless device.
Conclusion
"Education is not the answer to the question. Education is the means to the answer to all questions."
-- William Allin
Providing education for those who most need it has become the aim of every educational plan around the world. When it comes to providing educational information, the lack of information infrastructure in rural areas has become a massive obstacle. The Add-Drop Education System has been designed primarily to overcome this problem and to provide the much-needed educational information to the students of rural schools. The Wireless Data Transfer device is an essential part of this system that is to be implemented as an Embedded Solution. As this device will be deployed on buses in mass transit, the possibilities of educational data transfer become endless.
If the Digital Divide is to be bridged, we should start with the education system. No student need ever go without the educational information he or she craves ever again, no matter where he or she is located.
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