Enabling communications in disadvantage environments: An airborne remote communication (ARC) platform

Disaster response efforts during natural or man-made disasters are often hampered by compromised communications (e.g., lack or outage of cellular coverage). This can create a dangerous lack of communication or reliance on ad hoc networks, stifling information sharing. Existing systems that target this compromised communication gap are often difficult to rapidly deploy, proprietary and not interoperable, or designed for military use. Additionally, for many first responders (law enforcement, fire, EMS, etc.), current airborne sensor and communication assets are expensive or unavailable. In response to this capability gap, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has sponsored MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Pennsylvania State University to design and fabricate a low power, low weight, reliable communication prototype solution to provide essential information. The system design was driven by public safety data needs and operational constraints. The prototype system consists of wearable nodes that communicate via a repeater. Users can access the system using a standard 802.11 Wi-Fi access point. This paper describes the prototype system and its public safety design.