LoRa Based Wireless Network for Disaster Rescue Operations

Communication is very crucial during a crisis. It plays a vital role in rescuing victims at times of disasters. Catastrophic disasters can collapse conventional communication systems partially or completely, making rescue operations extremely difficult. Hence this requires an easily deployable, easily maintainable, independent communication system to help victims communicate to rescue teams. This paper presents a proposal of Long Range (LoRa) based wireless network for disaster rescue operations, to provide an offline communication system that gives the first responders a simple interface for managing the aspects of a disaster. The system uses LoRa and Wi-Fi technology for communication. LoRa is a wireless technology that offers low power, long-range and secure data transmission for machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Portable wireless nodes can be installed in the disaster area and survivors can connect to these nodes using Wi-Fi devices and communicate their needs. The victim’s messages are communicated to the rescue team using LoRa technology. A prototype system is constructed to evaluate the function of the network and its performance.

I. Introduction

Our state has been witnessing recurrent disasters in the form of floods and landslides over the past few years. During the occurrence of such disasters, user-owned devices such as mobile phones, laptops, etc., turns into a precious help to convey emergency messages and services to all the people affected. As a result, several emergency-related mobile applications have been proposed in the market but they are limited by the networking capabilities of the devices, as they are often based on short-range device-to-device communication technologies that might not be available in the emergency scenario.