Motivation for a step-by-step guide to set up wireless disaster recovery networks

Abstract

Radio access networks (RANs) have become an integral part of life and are especially important after disasters. However, many disasters also disrupt RANs. Disaster recovery networks connect survivors to the Internet again so that they can inform authorities about their situation, get information necessary for survival, and contact friends and family. In this paper we explain why a step-by-step guide in form of a mobile phone application will help survivors construct a multihop disaster recovery network of mobile phones. We develop a simple analytic model to describe how survivors should place mobile phones to relay transmissions over long distances. Then we set up a small scenario and compare our measurements to the analytic results. Our comparison shows that the analytic model only describes the general tendencies of channel quality and that it is necessary to measure the channel quality on each hop. As this measurement is too complex for an average disaster survivor we describe a step-by-step guide which can be implemented in a mobile phone application to guide survivors through the process of setting up a disaster recovery network. This mobile phone application would allow survivors to communicate with the each other and the outside world and thereby save lives in case of a disaster.