Survey on MANET Based Communication Scenarios for Search and Rescue Operations

Mobile crowd management is yet an emerging new research area for Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. The dynamic nature and mobility of Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) demand for new set of networking strategies to be developed in order to provide reliable and efficient communication during catastrophe such as in battlefield, terrorist attacks and natural disasters. A MANET is an independent, dynamic, self-adaptive and infrastructure-less connection of mobile devices. The role of communication has been playing a major role in all the aspects of catastrophic management such as circumspection or response and recovery. MANETs utilize TCP/IP protocol for communication between end nodes, but the mobility and resource overhead makes each layer in TCP/IP model to be modified frequently. Therefore routing in MANET drives out to be one of the most challenging research areas and has received enormous attention from the researchers in the past decades. This survey investigates the Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs) based routing protocols for search and rescue scenario. The main objective is to provide a categorization of MANET protocols based on infrastructure and phases of disaster management. Furthermore emergency response operations have been considered as a promising perspective for MANETs. This paper also examines and outlines the existing employment technologies of MANETs for search and rescue operations and the significant contributions made by the authors based upon the criteria of infrastructure, communication protocols and type of disaster scenario.