Volume 11, Number 3

Implementation of A Context-Aware Routing Mechanism in an Inexpensive Standalone
Communication System for Disaster Scenarios

  Authors

Regin Cabacas and In-Ho Ra, Kunsan National University, South Korea

  Abstract

Natural disasters often destroy and disrupt communication infrastructures that hinder the utilization of disaster applications and services needed by emergency responders. During these circumstances an implementation of a standalone communication system (SCS) that serves as an alternative communication platform for vital disaster management activities is essential. In this study, we present a design and implementation of an SCS realized using an inexpensive microcontroller platform. Specifically, the study employed Raspberry Pi (RPi) devices as rapidly deployable relay nodes designed with a context-aware routing mechanism. The routing mechanism decides the most efficient route to send messages or disseminate information in the network by utilizing a context-aware factor (CF) calculated using several context information such as delivery probability and link quality. Moreover, with the use of this context information, the proposed scheme aims to reduce communication delay and overhead in the network commonly caused by resource contention of users. The performance of the proposed SCS, was evaluated in a small-area case-scenario deployment using a messaging application and web-based monitoring service. Additionally, a simulation-based performance analysis of the proposed context-aware routing mechanism applied to an urban area map was also conducted. Furthermore, in the simulation, the proposed scheme was compared to the most commonly used Flooding and AODV schemes for SCS. Results show a high delivery probability, faster delivery time (low latency) and reduced message overhead when using the proposed approach compared with the other routing schemes

  Keywords

Standalone communication systems, disaster communication systems, context-aware routing