Development of a wireless sensor network for detecting fire and Gas leaks in a collapsing building

High-rise commercial and residential buildings are very common in today's modern cities and are subject to fires and gas leaks. When such buildings collapse, however, it is imperative that methods for the rescue and evacuation of residents be considered. This paper mainly focuses on detecting potential occurrences of cascading disasters due to fires and gas leaks in a collapsing building by frequently communicating with an Incident Management System via a wireless sensor network and UAVs. Using QualNet, an in-depth study of various antenna options and their characteristics is done and the selection of a suitable antenna, based on this study, is discussed. The network characteristics of ZigBee at different operating frequencies are also analyzed. Furthermore, an algorithm is proposed to deploy a wireless sensor network to detect fires, gas leaks, etc., using minimal number of ZigBee nodes.