Mobile phone auto registration to 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. The problem arise when victims' mobile phone only associated to the providers' network where the SIM card come. Even though it can manually associate to available network in an emergency situation, but victims' situation and knowledge might prevented them in doing that. In this work we propose method to enable mobile phones automatically associates themselves to OpenBTS-based cellular network.