Comparative Analysis of Communication Technologies for an Aerial IoT over Collapsed Structures

摘要

Coping with natural disasters is one of the central challenges of this century. Many disasters are accompanied by the collapse of buildings and other structures. Since, most of the rescue operations are manually executed, this, in turn, endangers the lives of the responders who are unaware of the situation inside the building. Exact localization of the trapped victims under the debris of collapsed buildings will help streamline the rescue operations. Use of UAVs to set up an aerial IoT to help in this effort is an area of ongoing research. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the various communication technologies that are best suited for such an application of IoT. Experiments were designed and performed under various scenarios to study the propagation effects through the debris, furniture, glass panels, etc. The communication technology alternatives were evaluated based on their coverage range, and throughput through various mediums such as concrete, metal, wood, glass, and air. This paper presents the results obtained and the inferences drawn from them.