IoT Fog Cloud Model for Digital Reach in Rural India

Abstract

Rural India faces a multitude of problems due to its digital divide as compared to the urban areas of the country. Internet of Things (IoT) may help to reduce the divide and lead to the digital development of rural India. Rural IoT can be designed to support smart village vision, which aims to provide automation in many sectors such as noise monitoring, energy consumption, smart lighting, environmental monitoring, health monitoring, education, agriculture, etc. and improve life quality of the people. This paper gives an insight of IoT, cloud computing, and fog computing concepts; and proposes a general model based on these computing paradigms with an objective to have digital inclusion of rural India in cyberspace. The paper presents the gram panchayat as the local grid for the data aggregation and transmission from IoT devices to cloud with nonconventional energy resources to minimize the effects of rural power supply inefficiencies that lead to the digital growth of rural India with urban India.