Rescue: Passive wireless sensor network architecture for earthquake rescue application

In a disaster situation such as an earthquake it is vital to know the number of people left under ruins. To address this problem, we propose RESCUE - wiREless backScattering CommUnication-based disastEr recovery system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first solution based on passive communication to be applied for disaster recovery to reveal people count inside collapsed build- ing. RESCUE is composed of special RFID reader and sensors that are used to determine the total number of people under ruins. Passive wireless sensor nodes are placed inside building during construction and are equipped with a camera that is activated in case of an earthquake and takes pictures of building interior. After an earthquake, backscattering communication is used by the reader located outside ruins to read image data from sensors. The images are used to evaluate the number of people present inside building just before the earthquake. We analyse passive communication channel between RESCUE reader and sensors. We derive passive wireless communication channel model over ruins and carry out simulations using a modified passive RFID simulator. Furthermore, we obtain the results of experimental study where we validate the derived channel model. Results show that RESCUE can provide high performance of data collection in relatively short time period, and hence, is a promising disaster recovery system architecture.