Aerial Base Stations for Enabling Cellular Communications during Emergency Situation

During disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, storms, tsunamis and man-made disasters, the need for communication becomes more imperative for the first responders as well as the people who were affected. It is very common that during such situations communication is interrupted due to physical damage of network devices, network congestion and interruption of supporting network infrastructure. Communications during such incidents can be the distinguishing factor between life and death for the affected population. Without communications, first responders might find it difficult to locate and rescue trapped victims during disaster recovery operations due to lack of synchronized operations. This paper presents a summary of our research efforts that led to the design of an integrated aerial platform for enabling communications and information sharing among the first responders and citizens during disaster recovery operations.