Communication Convergence for Improvement of the Unmanned Aerial Search and Rescue Missions

: Exponential progress in integrated circuits, best described by Moore's Law, has enabled tremendous advances in applied computing. Today, more than ever, there are palm-sized embedded devices with computational capabilities millions of times greater than those of what was once the lead computer on the Apollo 11 mission. Such levels of integration enable the fusion of functionalities that were once unimaginable, or at least impractical. Furthermore, today's existing technologies rely mostly on one or two communication technologies to organize UAVs for efficient search and rescue missions that largely do not utilize the communication convergence principle, thus omitting the potential for better search yield and rescue success. This paper recognizes that niche where communication convergence lacks its potential and presents a concept for the convergence of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LoRa and/or satellite IoT communication technologies to serve as an airborne communication infrastructure, a backbone generally, and enables a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to communicate efficiently wherever there is no local terrestrial communication infrastructure (such as GSM, Wi-Fi, digital radio, etc.). The concept was elaborated and applied to a use-case localization application scenario (of Wi-Fi enabled devices) for the purpose of search during rescue operations.