Power aware seamless emergency communication for heterogeneous wireless networks

Abstract

Establishing emergency communication is an urgent task in disaster relief operations. To provide urgent communication facilities to rescue teams and victims without any interruption due to network failure is more complicated. This paper proposes a framework for seamless handoff between various available networks thereby facilitating emergency communication without any disruption .The system creates an overlay network using the smart phones and laptops and the available networks. Wi-Fi/Wi-MAX communication is used between the smart phones if there is no cellular coverage. Furthermore, cellular gateway is used as an alternative remote communication means when the expansion of local networks reaches a working cellular base station. A new efficient algorithm which provides an optimization of target selection, heterogeneous hand over decision and hand over triggering condition has been proposed for seamless heterogeneous handoff. The overall system architecture, the relevant network elements, and the methods of establishing and integrating them to be a mission system are described. The proposed system can help to reduce the handoff time, helps to save battery life, support more terminal types, and provide emergency management services.