Donating blood is a common practice that has a positive effect on the lives of several individuals. Daily, the number of people in urgent need of blood continues to rise substantially. It is often challenging to find a suitable donor in case of emergency. The situation is worse if it is a rare blood group. This paper introduces a blockchain-based decentralised application (DApp) to match recipients with blood donors during an emergency. Personal information such as name, location, blood group, and donation history is stored securely in the blockchain distributed ledger through IPFS. The donors' lack of awareness and motivation are the primary reasons for people not coming forward for blood donations. We propose to gamify the blood donation process by issuing NFT badges as a reward for donors. This paper explains the design of smart contracts for storing donor and recipient data on the ledger and issuing NFTs to donors. The article also briefly discusses the process of designing the DApp.

Blockchain is the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies. Reliable machine-to-machine automatic transactions, such as auctions, bidding, and payments, utilise the immense potential of blockchain technology. Researchers are exploring blockchain-based applications for automobiles and transportation, such as electric vehicle (EV) charging and highway user fee payment. The use of blockchain eliminates the need for third parties in transactions. This paper presents a proof of concept for using EVs as energy storage in a smart grid system. Generators, consumers, and distributed energy resources (DER), such as solar and wind, make up the elements of a smart grid. We propose storing the surplus power generated by DER in the electric vehicle's battery. When the generation is less, or there is high demand, these EVs can supply the stored energy back to the grid. We use blockchain smart contracts and Ethereum cryptocurrency to monitor and monetise the process. We also make a cost comparison of conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and EVs, analysing the financial benefits of employing the suggested method in EV charging instead of more conventional charging methods.

Marine fishermen are unable to economically communicate either with other boats over the ocean or with the people on the shore due to the shortcomings in the available cellular and satellite communication. Project OceanNet bridges this gap to deploy a heterogeneous wireless communication system to provide internet access to the fishermen's smart phones in the boat helping them to reach out for help in critical situations. This work involves designing a wireless multi-hop backhaul network to extend the coverage and to improve the connectivity through an ad hoc mesh network between the access routers in different boats. Selecting the best path from the fishermen's end devices in the heterogeneous network can increase the throughput. The design and implementation of an elimination algorithm is dicussed to spectacle the improvement of the throughput and coverage. The algorithm is based on the analysis of the quality of various types of links using Signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and Expected Transmission Count(ETX) metrics. The performance analysis in hardware test bed prove that the packet delivery ratio is substantially improved by the proposed path selection algorithm in the network.

Our research center has developed a cost-effective marine communication network architecture to provide affordable Internet access to marine fishermen. This solution uses a multi-level infrastructure network based on long range Wi-Fi and TDMA for backhaul. Directional antennas are used to increase the range. Standard Wi-Fi connectivity is provided on the boats to which the fishermen connect using their smartphones. The various angular and linear movements of the boat due to the oceanic waves will impact the alignment of the directional antenna to the base station thereby affecting the link quality. In this work, the extent of such movements is modeled theoretically, and the values are compared with the actual results obtained from field trials for sea states 4 and 5. It is also shown that the signal strength fluctuations are higher when the sea is rougher. Finally, future work planned for further analysis based on experimental modeling is also described.

Urban floods have become a constant threat to human life and property. Also, high resolution cameras in smart phones have become ubiquitous. This work involves using Computer Vision algorithms to estimate the depth of flooding based on images taken by the general public which are geo-tagged and time-stamped. This approach will help in the implementation of effective and timely urban flood relief and management. This data can also be used to assess the effectiveness of preventive measures taken in the past and to plan remedial measures in the future.

Offshore fishing is a common occupation providing the livelihood for tens of millions worldwide. Since each fishing trip takes 5-7 days, it could be a depressing and sometimes dangerous activity especially since the fishermen have no easy way to communicate with the mainland. Currently, there is no economically viable way to stay connected. We have developed a cost-effective system for marine internet connectivity that provides assured 40+ km range which can be further extended opportunistically. This paper describes the field trials conducted to practically realize the system and presents the encouraging results obtained.

Currently, Indian fishermen use handheld radios or satellite phones for offshore communication. While the former is based on broadcast communication with its range limited by Line-of-Sight, the latter is expensive. Therefore, lack of connectivity-at-sea is a huge problem for many Indian fishermen. Hence, this work prescribes a hierarchical point-to-multi-point backhaul network using long range (LR) Wi-Fi technology. It is a multi-hop network consisting of base stations and clusters of boats. Each boat-cluster forms a wireless mesh access network. A field-trial was conducted at sea to measure and analyze the coverage and connectivity of the P2mP LR Wi-Fi backhaul network, using commercially available 5 GHz base stations, antennas and customer premises equipment (CPE). Several parameters such as transmission power level, mechanical antenna tilt at the base station and channel bandwidth were fine-tuned to maximize the range. This paper discusses the observations and the results obtained.