3. INTRODUCTION
Pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken by people to
connect with the Almighty. Every year the no. of people actively
involved in these pilgrimages is increasing exponentially. In
Makkah(Saudi Arabia) alone, every year 3 million people gather
to perform the rituals of the Hajj. Thus, it was of prime
importance that a tracking system be made to monitor them for
which real-time monitoring system was implemented in Hajj to
cater to their needs and tested on a small group of people, the
subsequent details of which we are going to explore in
upcoming slides.
5. DESIGN CONSTITUENTS
1. MOBILE SENSOR UNITS
2. FIXED SENSOR UNITS
3. NODE CONFIGURATION IN WSN
4. PROTOCOLS AND ALGORITHMS
6. MOBILE UNITS
A. Mobile Sensor Units
This unit includes:
1. an off-the-shelf SiRF GPS chip capable of estimating the location
information with 5 m accuracy.
2. A microchip PIC nanoWatt series microcontroller collects the data from
the GPS chip and frames the same according to WSN protocol.
3. An ISM band radio from Texas Instruments (Chipcon CC1100) transfers
the location data to the fixed sensor units with a range of 50–100 m.
4. The module also includes a ceramic chip fractal antenna for the radio,
and a separate antenna for GPS receiver.
5.Two lithium Ion AA batteries provide the power and a DC-DC converter,
from Texas Instruments, conditions the battery power to 3.6 V DC.
The mobile units are battery powered and therefore require
power-efficient hardware and software.
7. FIXED SENSOR UNITS
B. Fixed Sensor Units
The WSN is based on a set of fixed wireless nodes. Each fixed wireless node
consists of a UHF high gain antenna, RF transceiver, microcontroller, battery
and Ethernet for interfacing to the server via internet (TCP/IP connection).
Whenever there is a need to locate a pilgrim, the fixed units broadcast his/her
unique UID. Each mobile unit checks whether this UID matches its own. If
there is a match, the mobile unit sends an acknowledgement while others
remain silent. Subsequent protocol ensures that the appropriate location
information is sent to the fixed node which in turn sends it to the server. To
keep the overall software managing the system simple, we did not consider
any data encryption at this stage since only UID (known only to authorized
officers at the central server), time stamp, and location information are sent
across the network.
8.
9. NODE CONFIGURATION
Under the proposed configuration, the different nodes are classified either
as sensing only, sensing and routing, or gateways.
1.Sensing-only nodes receive queries from the network, collect data
from the mobile units in the vicinity, then send the data to nearby sensors.
2.In addition to sensing, some nodes function also as routers. Moreover,
few strategically placed nodes are selected to communicate with the
public communication networks.
3.Gateways send the information to broadcasting station
Fig. 2(a) and (b) show two different deployment scenarios: along a pilgrim
trail, and in a congregation.
10.
11. PROTOCOLS AND ALGORITHMS
The minimization of energy consumptions highly relies on the
processing and the communication requirements of the protocols and
algorithms at various layers of the WSN.
1.At the PHY and MAC layer levels, the duty cycle of the nodes (the
ratio of ON to OFF periods) is reduced by using a modified carrier-
sense multiple access (CSMA) protocol.
2.Multi-hop communication is used to route information. The
introduction of co-linear equal range hops between any node pair
reduces power by a factor of N^n in the order of in comparison
with a single hop system. Multihop communication, therefore,
provides an immediate advantage in capability for low power
devices.
12.
13. PILOT TESTING
• It is worth noting that the tracks followed by pilgrims include both rural as
well as urban areas.
•Some of the urban areas are overly crowded with dense structures and
high rising buildings. The system worked effectively even in such dense
area since it has its own dedicated network.
• However, the distance of recognition decreased in urban areas.
• For full deployment of the system, the fixed nodes need to be installed on
street light poles to facilitate signal transmission with minimal obstruction to
the propagation paths between fixed nodes and mobile units.
14.
15. IMPORTANT POINTS
1. We chose this topic because first of all it deals with our interest in
wireless systems and further is also beneficial to the society.
2. Theme of this topic is the pilgrim tracking system developed in Hajj two
years back and its merits.
3. In deviation to archaic RFID tags, WSN is used in this technology and it
uses a real-time monitoring to attend to pilgrim’s needs.
4. It is indeed very cost effective. Govt. bears all the expenses of adopting
this system and for people, it is a win-win situation as with the new app
“HAJJSALAM”, one can track one’s relatives by entering the login id of
that person.
5. As of now, this system is limited to real-time tracking and responding to
pilgrim's emergencies. In the near future, it may be attached with a heart
beat monitoring system also to check if the pilgrim is keeping up well or
not.
16. CONCLUSION
Though it is a very nascent one ,through this system, we can
address many issues like identification of pilgrims, medical
emergencies, guiding lost pilgrims and congestion management
too. For the past 2 years, this has been successfully implemented
in Hajj ,though on a small group of people. At present, the
researchers are working on improving the efficiency of the mobile
units along with ameliorating the scalability of this tracking
system. Hopefully, in the near future, this technology will address
the needs of officials and people alike ,satisfactorily.
17. REFERENCES
IEEE EMBEDDED SYSTEMS LETTERS, VOL. 4, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2012
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