Detection and location of people in emergency situations through their PMR or GSM/UMTS phones

The STARRS project focuses on the study, design and development of smart antennas and beam forming algorithms working in harsh propagation environment for the improvement of environmental risk/crisis management, especially in search and rescue (SAR) operations. The STARRS main goals are to detect and locate victims' positions with a good accuracy as well as to allow alert broadcasting to people in emergency situations. This FP6 European project has been realized with the participation of Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL-B), Thales Communications (F), Joanneum Research (A), Teletel and Vodaphone (Gr), Société française de Radio communications (SFR-F), as well as end users such as French and Cypriote firemen. STARRS started in October 2006 for a 30 months duration and is now finalized.