Sistemi di localizzazione e comunicazione assistiti dal satellite per servizi di emergenza

SALICE DIT-PRJ-08-058

Homepage http://lenst.det.unifi.it/salice/
Status NOT active project
DISI role Partner
Project type Research Project
Dimension National
Acquisition date 2008-09-22
Start date 2008-09-22
End date 2008-09-21

Project details

Project astract The activities of the scientific research communities have been recently motivated towards the topics of the communications and networking technologies for public safety and security; this trend has been enforced by two specific facts:<br/>- the rising of a new global menace, the terrorist actions against countries which are the most developed ones or have more heterogeneous population in terms of religions and ethnic and cultural identity;<br/>- the big attention which gas been given, also by the media, to catastrophic events such tsunamis (Indonesia), huge fires (South-Italy, Greece, South California),floods (New Orleans) which sometimes are deemed to be partially due to the climatic changes.<br/>As a result, a big research and standardization activity has been accomplished at international level in order to define modern, interoperable communications and networking standards for emergency response and public safety. Particularly, in Europe, the ETSI Recommendation TS 102 181 recognizes the importance of the "Location Services" in the EMTEL framework (Emergency Telecommunications), which must "provide real-time information regarding the position of<br/>personnel or vehicles to a command point" [1]. To this aim the solution which seems to receive a higher attention is based on the integration of navigation and communication systems in a unique terminal which can be used by the rescue teams.<br/>Although the use of existing network infrastructures (cellular 3G and beyond, satellite networks, dedicated public safety networks such as TETRA, etc.) is and will remain crucial to connect a disaster site with the outside world (crisis centre, data bases with emergency plans, hospitals, etc), the communication infrastructure at the site itself is often only partially available or completely destroyed. Therefore, in emergency areas communication/navigation services can be guaranteed to users (i.e.: first responders, population) by effectively integrating heterogeneous technologies. In particular integration between self-organizing space segments, such as satellite networks and HAPs (High Altitude Platforms) and terrestrial systems, such as UMTS or TETRA, seems to be a very promising approach in order to define an Emergency Network. Integrated platform intrinsically fits the requirements of emergency scenarios characterized by network resources scarcity, partially absence of active communications infrastructures due to an unpredictable emergency event. The effective management of heterogeneous integrated architectures in disaster areas has to be faced.<br/>The SALICE project aims at identifying the solutions which can be adopted in an integrated reconfigurable NAV/COM device and studying its feasibility in realistic scenarios. This project aims at contributing to the main on-going research activities which are performed both in the national and in the international scientific and industrial communities; therefore, also the<br/>terminology which is adopted in this document is derived from the reference recommendations issued by the ETSI. The first goal of the SALICE project is the definition of the baseline scenarios and of the system architecture which will allow the design of new and effective solutions for what concerns integrated communications and localization techniques, Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio (CR) NAV/COM devices, satellite and HAPS integration in the rescue services, heterogeneous solutions in the area of intervention (IAN, Incident Area Network). Particular attention will be devoted to the optimization of the resources management strategies and to the cognitive approaches.<br/>In this context a specific important topic is the "Cooperative Localization" of rescue entities (persons and means) that intervene in emergency situations, where timely and precise localization of the rescuers is essential for the coordination and planning of search, rescue and disaster relief operations, in terms of efficacy and safety for both rescuers and injured people. This focus is motivated by the consideration that the indoor/outdoor location and tracking capability, integrated with the required communications infrastructure, has been recognized to be the single most important technological development enhancing emergency response operations. Cooperative localization, i.e., the localization of the different actors of the rescue intervention, considered as "nodes" of a wireless communications network, which is the most promising approach available nowadays, even when GNSS services are only partially available will be thoroughly studied.
Keywords Software Defined Radio, Reconfigurable network, Heterogeneous Networks, Emergency Risk Applications
Fundings 264623 €
Partners
  • University of Florence
  • University of Rome Tor Vergata
  • DISI - UniTN
  • University of Reggio Calabria

DISI Sub-project details

Project astract From a communication point of view, emergency rescue applications are characterized by some constraints in terms of real-time response and quality-of-service.<br/>Moreover, the application scenarios that will be considered in SALICE project will involve the presence of wireless terminals characterized by different data rates and QoS requirements. Standard transmission techniques does not provide the due flexibility needed to fulfil the above mentioned requirements. In fact, data transmission standards only provides a limited support to real-time multi-rate communications (e.g.: UMTS) or they don't forecast it at all.<br/>Therefore, three basic issues should be faced in the design of the lower network layers: multi-rate transmission, controlled quality-of-service and real-time access. In particular, we can subdivide the communication network depicted in three cellular areas: <br/>1. Rescue team picocell, corresponding to a single Rescue team cluster. Its coverage area should be limited to 100 squared meters and is related to an "emergency island" where some operators are working with their communication terminals. An existing or, more probably, an on-site deployed wireless sensor network is transmitting heterogeneous data to the master mobile node. The collection of data acquired by the rescue team is actually the "scene description" related to the emergency island. Such a "picture" of the scene can be augmented by text and voice messages transmitted by other kind of terminals (e.g. palmtops, laptops) owned by the operators of the rescue team. Inside this team picocell a mobile BTS actually works as "local" access-point. It gathers the information sent in uplink by the ad-hoc WSN and by operators' terminals and forwards it to the master mobile node. Inside the picocell, it is crucial to guarantee real-time access to sensors and terminals characterized by very different data-rates. Due to the safety-critical nature of the considered application, QoS constraints are quite severe. In such ad-hoc network scenario, the mobile BTS should be an "intelligent" access-point that encompasses the capability of dynamically reconfiguring the entire picocellular segment on the basis of detailed information about network status.<br/>2. Emergency microcell: it groups and manages some rescue-team picocell. Its coverage are should consider part of an urban area (typically a city quarter). The gateway of this microcell is represented by the Master Mobile Node,<br/>installed on-board a devoted vehicle. The information forwarded by each rescue-team picocell is received, on-board processed and simultaneously forwarded to the operation control centre. In this sense, the Master Mobile node is a regenerative and intelligent gateway. The resulting amount of information coming from several "emergency<br/>islands" is therefore forwarded to the operation centre by exploiting a broadband aerospace link. Multi-rate efficient reception of the transmitted information should be ensured at this level of the network.<br/>3. Global emergency macrocell: it groups and manages some emergency microcells. The master node of the global macrocell is the high-altitude platform (HAP) in direct connection with a satellite (preferably a LEO satellite in order to<br/>avoid huge latencies) to ensure global coverage to the wireless network.<br/>From state-of-the-art analysis, it clearly appears that standard wireless networking techniques (both for short-range and cellular communications) cannot provide the expected agility and flexibility to face the challenging communication requirements mentioned above. A reliable answer can be provided by the dual-use in civil applications of technologies successfully deployed in tactical radios. In particular, we are considering novel concepts about context-aware PHY and MAC layer techniques in the perspective of reconfigurable SDR-based wireless networks. In our project, the network<br/>context consists on information about: a) network nodes geographical positions, b) data-rates and QoS requirements of rescue terminals, c) channel and network situations (in terms of interference, propagation, congestion, etc.). <br/>Cross-layer PHY-MAC methodologies will be considered in order to develop reconfigurable modulation, multi-access and radio resource management techniques in the specific multi-rate framework. Moreover, an optimized cross-layer approach will be considered targeted to achieve the best QoS in the specific emergency context.
Keywords Software Defined Radio, Reconfigurable network, Heterogeneous Networks, Emergency Risk Applications
Fundings 47900 €
Manager Claudio Sacchi