Citation

Mezghani F, Mitton N. Sensors (Basel) 2017; 17(10): s17102370.

Affiliation

Inria Lille-Nord Europe, 40 Avenue Halley, 59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France. nathalie.mitton@inria.fr.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/s17102370

PMID

29039770

Abstract

Opportunistic communications present a promising solution for disaster network recovery in emergency situations such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, where infrastructure might be destroyed. Some recent works in the literature have proposed opportunistic-based disaster recovery solutions, but they have omitted the consideration of mobile devices that come with different network technologies and various initial energy levels. This work presents COPE, an energy-aware Cooperative OPportunistic alErt diffusion scheme for trapped survivors to use during disaster scenarios to report their position and ease their rescue operation. It aims to maintain mobile devices functional for as long as possible for maximum network coverage until reaching proximate rescuers. COPE deals with mobile devices that come with an assortment of networks and aims to perform systematic network interface selection. Furthermore, it considers mobile devices with various energy levels and allows low-energy nodes to hold their charge for longer time with the support of high-energy nodes. A proof-of-concept implementation has been performed to study the doability and efficiency of COPE, and to highlight the lessons learned.

Language: en

Keywords

disaster recovery; energy consumption; multi-network; opportunistic communication