Drone-based Re-establishment of Communications for Humanitarian Rescue Organisations

Two main challenges face humanitarian rescue organisations during disaster events (a) gathering ground level intelligence of damage and required actions; (b) re-establishment of communications to aid coordination and allow people to alert their needs and position. Mobile phones may stop working during a disaster due to loss of core infrastructure or lack of capacity leading to a loss of communication for the vulnerable or those in need of help. First responders are also unable to relay information back to the Communication control. Re-establishment of communication is therefore critical and can be achieved through hotspot creation with ad-hoc drone networking. This paper investigates and evaluates different possible solutions: (a) Serval Mesh developed in partnership with the New Zealand Red Cross, allowing smart-phones to communicate; (b) Open Garden, which shares Internet connections between laptops, tablets and phones in a similar way to WiFi hotspots and (c) Software Defined Radio (SDR) with base transceiver station software for user triangulation through Global System For Mobile Communications (GSM). Communications have followed the World Radio Communication Conference (WRC) guidelines for terrestrial and satellite links.