Wireless Ad-hoc Architecture for Disaster Survivor Detection and Management

Abstract

In critical situations like disaster relief operations the requirement for a rapidly deployable, robust to failures and easily maintainable communication network is highlighted. The reason behind this is even though communication and exchange of information are the cornerstones of any disaster response for informed decision making, in most of the disaster situations conventional communication systems collapse completely or partially. Most widely used post disaster communication systems are half duplex walkie talkie systems and service provider dependent callout systems. Use of portable Wi-Fi Ad-hoc networks for establishing communication in a post disaster situation in order to coordinate field activities of rescue crews can solve many problems that exist in currently used systems for such a situation.In this paper, a wireless Ad-hoc network architecture is proposed to promptly insure communication means to grasp the information within the disaster area for rescue teams and disaster survivors. Core of the network is created using Wi-Fi nodes by adopting the Ad-hoc paradigm. These portable nodes can be installed in the disaster affected area so that they inter communicate while rescue members and survivors having Wi-Fi devices can also connect to these nodes. At least one of the nodes in an area has a long distance transceiver unit in order to establish communication with a distanced data centre. For redundancy several such transceiver units can be used in a network. A prototype system is constructed to evaluate the function of the network and its performance through several disaster applications such as VoIP, file transferring, broadcasting warnings and peer to peer texting.