Challenged Communities (N4C) internet and email access is brought to the most remote wilderness regions. N4C  aims to extend Internet access to remote corners of Europe, field trialling architecture, design infrastructure and applications of networks in tests started 2008 and due to run to 2011.

It's latest performance is taking place in Swedish Laponia, the Padjelanta National Park, where Sami reindeer herders traditionally lead a nomadic life, an ancient and resilient European culture, not averse to using technology, with the helicopter as supply delivery, transporter, herd locator and herder.

With the N4C project, helicopters take on a new role. Delay Tolerant Networking has been used to carrry email and webtraffic to and from four Sami village locations between 20-50km from any power or networking infrastructure.

Without affordable satellite or cellular connectivity, the villages have become test centres for setting up a solar powered Wi-Fi hotspot at the edge of each community.

Village routers built by TCD and Intel Open Innovation lab incorporates Eurotech Proteus fanless embedded single board computers, based onIntel Atom processor for flexibility, high performance with low power consumption and a key aspect is Delay Tolerant Networking technology bundle protocol.

Bundles containing transactions are stored at each router for transfer to helicopters on a regular flight ferrying people and supplies that then retransfer the bundles to internet gateways at one of the two helicopter bases with wireless connections.

Routers and components have to be very robust to cope with quite commonly a week of solid rain and significant temperature drops at night. Each router is powered by 60W soalr panels and 12v batteries.

The Proteus board runs all communications including wireless, email, web and DTN protoculs.

But pilots are always unprice tagged. Interesting to know what the cost of such an operation would be.