Intelligent wireless network deployment for search and rescue situations

Under search and rescue situations the time to find and to rescue victims is very important. The use of autonomous mobile robots can increase the possibility to detect victims while avoiding to expose the life of human teams. In this paper is presented a methodology for the deployment of wireless nodes to provide communication ways on emergency situations. A mobile robot is used to release stand-alone wireless nodes while exploring the environment. Due to the stochastic nature of signals and the unknown factors on the environment, the a priori assumptions of the expansion of the Radio Frequency can not be used. Is then that, analyzing signals of released nodes that the mobile robot decides where to add another node, in order to assure environment coverage. The proposed methodology has proved to provide total coverage with non exhaustive exploration. Exploration is directed by an a priori knowledge of the environment outside of scope of this paper.