Svxlink VOIP implementation using raspberry Pi in education and disaster relief situations

Abstract

Radio amateurism is a hobby, which helped in pioneering many innovations that we are using today. Hobbyists, which use radio communication to communicate, are called Hams. Radio communications has great history and Hams are part of it. Radio amateurism is a hobby which plays great part in emergency and disaster relief situations when conventional communications became unavailable. Technology built around radio communication is suitable in education to test study cases, and gain knowledge in wireless and computer communications. Purpose of this paper is to experiment with open source VOIP software (svxlink) using, cheap microcomputer hardware, one of available Linux distributions, radio amateur frequencies, radio amateur transceivers and antennas. Different technological issues brought together in this paper such as wired and wireless communication, VOIP over Internet with voice coming from radio amateur equipment and vice versa. We also tested integrated automatic position reporting system (APRS) because svxlink has capability to dynamically update data on APRS server what is capability with potential many applications such as active and passive measuring activities of VOIP users, users' mobility, and other applicable APRS functionalities as well. In this paper are published experiences from real disaster situation during floods and mudslides which hits Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 2014.