Narad

Narad is a distributed crisis information system designed for rapid crisis-mapping and information dissemination in high-density event scenarios. The project was a finalist at IRIS 2021 and the research paper was presented at ICECCT 2021 and published on IEEE Xplore.

The Problem

Billions of people still lack reliable internet access, particularly in rural areas where traditional infrastructure is economically unviable. During crisis situations — natural disasters, disease outbreaks, civil emergencies — information delivery becomes critical but connectivity often fails precisely when it's needed most.

Our Approach

We designed a mesh network of Raspberry Pi-based nodes for targeted FM radio broadcasting. The key insight was using FM radio as the last-mile delivery mechanism — even basic feature phones and cheap radio receivers can pick up FM signals without any subscription or internet connectivity.

How It Works

• Mesh Network: Raspberry Pi nodes communicate with each other over WiFi to form a self-organizing network
• FM Transmission: Each node can broadcast content over FM radio to nearby receivers
• Targeted Delivery: The system can push location-specific content — local weather, emergency alerts, educational content in regional languages
• Low Power: Designed to run on solar power or batteries in areas with unreliable electricity

Technical Details

The system uses:

• Raspberry Pi-based nodes for compute and FM transmission
• Custom routing protocols optimized for high-latency, unreliable links
• Content management system for scheduling and targeting broadcasts

We tested the system in simulated rural conditions and demonstrated that it could provide basic information delivery at a fraction of the cost of traditional infrastructure.

Recognition

• IRIS 2021 Finalist — Indian Research & Innovation Symposium
• IEEE ICECCT 2021 — Paper presented and published
• IEEE Xplore — "Localised FM Digital Audio Broadcasting using WiFi Mesh Networks"

Research conducted with Ashvin Verma and Priyanshi Ahuja.