Milestones
- Sep. 2016: Project started and Dr Zheng Chu was employed by the MDx team, working as a full-time Research Assistant (RA).
- Oct. 2016: Kamran attended the ACOSIS’17 conference and presented research results on a scalable D2D architecture design for Public Safety Network
- Nov. 2016: Dr Deebak joined the METU team as an RA.
- Feb. 2017: Mr Noel Saldanha has joined the project’s MDX team, working on the FPGA implementation and app design in WP2.
- Mar. 2017: The PIs from the UK team (Dr. Huan Nguyen) and from the Turkish team (Prof. Adnan Yazici) attended the Wireless Days conference in Porto to present the project’s outcome (energy harvesting solution for D2D communications that can be potentially applied in the disaster scenarios). The two PIs have also discussed details of the project’s progress and plan the next steps.
- May 2017: After a number of Skype meetings, a face-to-face meeting at METU-NCC between two UK and Turkish teams is held in early May 2017. Two teams’ members (Dr Huan Nguyen, Dr Tuan Le, Prof. Mehmet Karamanoglu, and Dr Enver Ever) will also be attending the ICT’17 conference in Cyprus to present other project’s outcomes: designs of D2D cooperative communications and of D2D multi-hop relaying services towards disaster communication and management systems.
- May 2017: Teams jointly organised international workshop IWNPD’17 in Cyprus for public safety and disaster services
- June 2017: Dr Hadi Zahmatkesh joined the METU team as an RA
- Jan 2018: Dr Mohsin Raza joined the MDX team as an RA
- June 2018: Dissemination workshop in Hendon, London with 60+ participants from academia and industries. Programme is here
- Sep 2018: Dr Purav Shah disseminated results at workshop in Istanbul
- Sep 2018: Huan Nguyen, Tuan Le, Kamran Ali, Noel Saldanha traveled to Ankara to attend the dissemination workshop in Ankara with the METU team (Adnan, Enver, Fadi, and students)
- Jan 2019: Final workshop with stakeholders and British Council in Ankara
Design, Work Plan, and Results
WP1: The MDX team has been leading this WP and has worked extensively on the tasks T1, T2 and T3. Zheng, Tuan and Kamran are working mainly on this WP.
WP2/3: The METU team has been working on this while the MDX and ARX teams are working on a prototype (using FPGA) implementing a D2D based warning messaging system
- Feb. 2016: Three RedBoard FPGAs were purchased, a Dell workstation was allocated
- Mar. 2016: One XILINX FMC to EZ-USB FX3 board, one Kit Dev EZ-USB FX3 USB3.0 purchased; three Diligent Interface Development Tools Pmod-USB-UART purchased
- Deebak and Enver are working on the network/routing protocols
- Noel and Duc are focusing on the FPGA design and implementation
- Sep 2018 Mohsin and team design the prototype and app for alerting services
- Nov 2018: Hankan, Burak and Enver team from METU design the multihop location tracking services and app
A messaging system with FPGA/USRP/Ras. Pi
We use a simple system with FPGA/USRP/Ras. Pi (acting as a mobile user or a relay) who is able to send a simple message (such as “Warning! You are entering a dangerous zone/situation!”) to the control center (a computer) when it is triggered by certain condition (such as dangerous situation). The trigger condition can be manually set in our program (we can make a button to switch it on and off for trigger).
The goal for this stage is just to prove that once an alert is triggered at the device, it is able to send back to the control centre and take the corresponding instruction from the centre. Actions include: form a message, pack it into a packet, send it through an USB connection.
The steps should be:
- The FPGA/USRP/Ras.Pi board: even triggered (button pressed) -> create a message -> pack into a packet -> send the packet to centre through USB connection
- The centre (PC): receive the packet -> unpack the packet -> create another message in responding -> pack the message into a packet -> send the packet to the FPGA board through USB connection
- The FPGA/USRP/Ras.Pi board: receive the response packet -> unpack it -> read the message -> set warning (flash a LED).
The computer playing the role as control centre needs to have a user interface: it shows the monitor of events and response status.
In reality, a device just simply updates the centre the device’s location. Giving warning is the job of the centre as the map of dangerous places is stored at the centre database, which could be updated dynamically.
In Stage 1, forming packet is necessary as we may need to support many devices. Packaging also means to notify the receiver who is the sender. We may want to use a simple addressing mechanism at this level.
In Stage 2, collecting location info and dispatching safety messages. Testing for the D2D connections via the relay
Location tracking via hybrid approach (METU team)
An autonomous intelligent software, a location database, and a control centre which is able to analyse the critical location data and convert it into safety/emergency messages are developed as part of the software suite. Furthermore, a mobile application is also provided for LTE D2D-enabled mobile devices to automatically update location information when engaged in D2D communications. The framework developed focuses on reducing the time spent to locate potential victims with the aim of facilitating quick medical assistance. It introduces both reactive and proactive approaches using Android, WiFi P2P technology, and local/central location NoSQL based database synchronization. The system can obtain the location of the user with fixed intervals to store in both local and centralized databases in the aftermath of a disaster for authorities to query the necessary information. Furthermore, the information related to the neighbouring mobile devices within a specific coverage area is also stored for the cases where some of the devices are not reachable due to disasters. With these features, it is possible to consider the system as a hybrid one where both reactive and proactive approaches are employed in order to reach the most up to date information available. In addition, the emergency medical information of the users is collected via a mobile application to accelerate the medical services. The scalability and performance related studies are also completed through the use of simulation and analytical models for the proposed framework. Even though the main focus of the research was earthquakes in this project, the developed infrastructures can be adopted to other kinds of disastrous situations such as floods, forest fires, and pandemic diseases.
Results, publications, demos, and impacts
Please go to here