Hybrid wireless mesh network deployment: a communication testbed for disaster scenarios

Abstract

The application of a reliable communication infrastructure in emergency situations is the focus of this project. Communication and interoperability between different organizations of first responders has been a problem for a long time. There have been examples of failure in communication between different organizations at World Trade Center on 9/11: for example some of the police warnings were not heard by fire fighters that resulted in several lives lost. In most cases, network unavailability or incapability of coordination among networks causes much damage. A communication infrastructure has specific requirements to be widely deployable at emergency applications such as high reliability, robustness, interoperability with existing technologies, quick reconfiguration, and low cost. It must be able to operate in a highly distributed and infrastructure-less manner, quickly deployable, easy to reconfigure, and allocate network resources efficiently. We propose a Hybrid Wireless Mesh Network as a well-suited candidate capable of creating a communication infrastructure where the existing communication infrastructure is damaged or unavailable. This infrastructure has the ability to work in a heterogeneous environment where different technologies might be available as backhaul through multiple interface cards designed in Calit2's CalMesh boxes. In addition to the technical constraints in such a demanding environment, we must consider some of the sociological problems that arise when new technologies are introduced, including resistance to technology adoption, and designing new warning systems to utilize the new infrastructure, and concerns surrounding sharing information and privacy.In our research to date, we have deployed a HWMN made up of Calit2's interoperable CalMesh nodes at a full-scale crisis response drill organized by the San Diego Metropolitan Medical Strike Team (MMST) in which we were able to collect network statistical data from the medical first responders' communication over the network we deployed.We are also developing our simulation results in cellular networks investigating different real scenarios that may occur at ground zero. We would like to extract mobility patterns and channel characterization from real world scenarios to integrate this simulation results with other transportation and evacuation simulators in order to allocate network resources more efficiently, and route traffic effectively to insure that cellular infrastructures are not overloaded so that broadcast warnings and messages are still received by evacuees.