The paper entitled “Self-aligning Wireless Communication for First Responder Organizations in Interoperable Emergency Scenarios”, has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of ICWN’14, the 2014 International Conference on Wireless Networks – http://www.worldacademyofscience.org/worldcomp14/ws/conferences/icwn14 – July 21-24, 2014, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
The paper is focused on the description of the wireless communication network and the wireless communication devices developed within the IDIRA project, aimed at allowing communication in large scale disaster situations when the local communication network could be partially or totally destroyed. As IDIRA’s main aim is to improve cooperation across responding organizations by enabling interoperability between different information systems that can mutually act as data sources or data consumers, and with connected devices used on the field, the proposed wireless gateways (WGW) will allow the setup of a suitable network infrastructure, for the seamless exchange of information using, among the others, the EDXL (Emergency Data Exchange Language) family of standards as data formats (see https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=emergency)
Abstract
This paper presents wireless gateways (WGW) – a wireless communication solution for first responder organizations. The system is based on 802.11 wireless LAN technologies. The core of the system is a self-alignment of directional antennas which span a kind of mesh network. The links between the WGWs can be up to 3.5 kilometers (line of sight), without the need of human interaction for setting up the network. Further the WGW offers wireless connectivity to end devices such as tablets of the first responders. The installation of a network based on WGWs does not need IT know how and can be performed by first responders on their own.
Authors
Peter Dorfinger, Georg Panholzer, Ferdinand Von Tuellenburg – Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Salzburg, Austria;
Massimo Cristaldi, Giovanni Tusa – Intelligence for Environment & Security – IES Solutions, Catania, Italy;
Franz Boehm – Roofnode, Unterrabnitz, Austria