Design and Implementation of an Emergency Datacasting System Using 2-meter Amateur Radio Band

Abstract

Even in new decades, modern communication technology is still affected by natural and man-made disasters, which threatens people’s lives and make the internet or mobile phone networks unavailable for use. The Design and Implementation of an Emergency Datacasting System using the 2-meter Amateur Radio Band prototype consisting of microcontrollers and walkie talkies operating on the 2-meter amateur radio band of 144-148 MHz. It is used to enable a two-way communication system, even without cellular service and internet, between the community, barangays, public service groups and local/national government agencies related to disaster response. With this, responding to the victims of calamities most especially to areas or communities that has no service, will be easier and faster. Once the system was on, radio transceivers in each base station communicate with each other. Wi-Fi enabled device detects and connects to an access point provided by the microprocessor, which could let 255 devices connect. When connected, it will be redirected to a specific IP address where they can send/receive private or emergency messages to and from users and admin. Users from different base stations meet at a common webpage. Microcontroller serves as the modem, which encodes and decodes the information to and from audio frequency signals, respectively. It is fed to the walkie-talkie to transmit/receive tones. Using a statistics method, the device is said to be 100 percent accurate through several tests receiving the same message without any errors, 97.6 percent reliable in the time, spanning at 8 hours through its transfer time and having an internal consistency of ‘Good’ for the user-friendliness of the webpage interface. The device improves existing datacasting systems since it does not depend on mobile networks, and it commonly uses a one way, not the two-way distribution of information.