Home // International Journal On Advances in Internet Technology, volume 2, number 1, 2009 // View article

A Disaster Aid Sensor Network using ZigBee for Patient Localization and Air Temperature Monitoring

Authors:
Ashok-Kumar Chandra-Sekaran
Anthony Nwokafor
Layal Shammas
Christophe Kunze
Klaus D. Mueller-Glaser

Keywords: Emergency response, ZigBee mesh network simulation, Localization, Temperature zone detection.

Abstract:
The mass casualty emergency response involves logistic impediments like overflowing victims, paper triaging, extended victim wait time and transport. We propose a new system based on a location aware wireless sensor network to overcome these impediments and assist the emergency responders (ER) to improve emergency response during disasters. In this paper we focus on the communication aspect, localization aspect and disaster site environment (air temperature) monitoring functionalities of this new emergency response system. We have done ZigBee simulations for investigating the handling of routers, mobility and scalabilty by ZigBee and thereby find out its suitability for our scenario. We have developed an energy-efficient ZigBee-ready temperature sensor node hardware and setup a ZigBee mesh network demonstrator. A RSSI-based localization solution is analyzed to find its suitability for tracking patients at the disaster site. A new algorithm to detect and display the temperature zones at the disaster site is developed and analyzed to find its computation efficiency. The patient tracking and temperature zone detection results show the increase of situation awareness, which can enable fast patient evacuation.

Pages: 68 to 80

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2009. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 7, 2009

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2652