An ultra-wide band based ad hoc networking scheme for personnel tracking in emergencies

This paper describes an ultra wideband (UWB) based ad hoc networking scheme which enables a control center to track all emergency personnel deployed in buildings in an incident area, and also enables communication of other types of data directed from emergency personnel, including status information and alarm in particular. In this network, GPS-enabled vehicles form a coordination reference framework. They also serve as egress points to collect data generated by emergency personnel. Additional dropped terminals are used to expand the network coverage. A Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based medium access protocol is used by terminals to access the radio channel. An anycast routing protocol is proposed and designed. This protocol enables each ad hoc device attached to emergency personnel to discover a communication path to one of the egress points. The network management related information is included in packet headers. Thus terminals can select free time slots and construct routes by overhearing neighborpsilas transmissions. Taking the advantage of the periodically nature of position calculation and reporting, each terminal is maintained with up-to-date network status.