Wi-Fi Signal Coverage Distance Estimation in Collapsed Structures

Recently, there is an increasing trend of research in leveraging Wi-Fi signatures for various applications. This paper investigates the feasibility of effective Wi-Fi signals coverage in the case of collapsed structures. The objectives of this paper are to first identify the possible collapsed structure environments and then to compute the effective distance coverage for license free ISM bands signals to have maximum coverage. This scheme discusses Wi-Fi signals behavior at three different frequencies i.e., 5GHz, 2.4GHz and 900MHz which is also termed as Wi-Fi Halow. We have employed modified path loss model termed as PLCollapsed for proper reception of echo that estimates the coverage range based on path losses encountered to Wi-Fi signal in these collapsed environments. The objectives have been achieved through proper simulations with different attenuation factors based on complexity of collapsed structure and are compared for aforementioned frequencies. Comparison of simulation results shows that Wi-Fi halow outperforms other frequencies and can be very effective for post-disaster rescue while replacing the traditional Doppler radar techniques hence paving way for more ubiquitous systems.