Mobile phone location logging into OpenBTS-based cellular network in disaster situation

Abstract

When disasters occurs, cellular network might be down and cannot serve subscribers anymore. On the other hand, many victims trapped in a wreckage might still have access to their mobile phone. An OpenBTS-based cellular network has been long before known as an ideal solution to rapidly deploy emergency GSM cellular network in situation after disaster. We propose to deploy a mobile OpenBTS along with search and rescue operation. While the search and rescue team doing their jobs, the OpenBTS serves the victims mobile phone. The victims in limited space and time might access the OpenBTS system to try to send short messages (SMS). In this paper we propose a method to logging the location of received SMS to OpenBTS, so the disaster stakeholders will have way to find the possible victims location at later time.