An ultra-wide band indoor personnel tracking system for emergency situations (Europcom)

This paper provides an overview of an indoor positioning and communications system for emergency personnel, which will allow efficient management and coordination of rescue operations in disaster zones, e.g. in buildings, which have partly collapsed due to fire or earthquake. The system is based on an ultra-wideband wireless ad-hoc network. The main challenge addressed by the system design is a self calibrating positioning system in an ad-hoc network scenario, which at least partly operates under non-line-of-sight conditions. This paper briefly describes system architecture and key aspects of the PHY, MAC, NET, and positioning (POS) sub-systems. Performance of the system is illustrated by ranging results and positioning tests.