Results & Impacts

The project team have done excellent work in developing a D2D based safety system to address the disaster events. Instead of covering every unsafe place with expensive base stations or stationary relays, the team exlpored a cheaper and faster approach by utilizing LTE devices as relays. The developed prototype for safety alerting is impressive and important. I am excited and happy for Ericsson to join and partner the project team in the next phase to develop the system further to tackle the current COVID-19 pandemic and  other disasters.

Dr. Mallik Tatipamula, CTO, Ericsson Silicon Valley, USA

The fact that your project is able to solve a real-life problem is very valuable for us. Many experts are expecting a large-scale earthquake in the near future, particularly in the Istanbul region, and I think your system provides a valuable contribution to aid recovery from these kinds of disastrous situations. After all, your demonstrations show that the prototype can help in saving human lives. I am also impressed with the state of healthy and fruitful collaboration between the partners, and the project deserves to be considered as a success story.

Mr. Erhan Yavas, Newton-Katip Celebi Fund Programme Coordinator, Turkey

It was exciting to join the project team to explore great potential of the 5G systems to support planning and recovery in natural and humanitarian disasters. As an industry partner, we were fascinated to see the innovations proposed and created in latest wireless technologies. We were every happy to help the team in converting those innovations into prototype for trials and test. We will support the team to develop and trial the system at large scale.

Dr Duc To, Principal Algorithm Engineer, Viavi Solutions Ltd (formerly Cobham Wireless), Stevenage, UK

Safety services are in high demand worldwide, particularly in the event of disasters (both natural and human ones). Roughly one million people died in disasters between 2004 and 2013 (IFRC). Unfortunately, Turkey is no exception, suffering from various disasters, e.g., earthquakes in 1999 (45000 died), in 2011 (604 died, 2608 injured), and in 2020 (29 died); mining accident in Soma Eynez Mine in 2014 (301 fatalities); and recent avalanche in 2020 (40 died). The COVID19 pandemic is affecting the whole world badly.

Our Newton funded project targeted those emergency/safety situations in Turkey and its region, by developing a location-based system that provides safety support to victims (mobile users) and assists emergency/rescue services, utilising the latest device-to-device (D2D) and relay technologies in 4G/5G mobile networks. The system is able to provide assistance to reach people in need during/after a disaster event, and it allows safety alerts to reach users who are in danger of entering unsafe areas. It can support the rescue actions to be quickly deployed to the disaster sites. The system is also useful for other dangers at remote campsites, snowy walking trails and landslides, where conventional communication means of cellular networks may only be partially available. Importantly, it can potentially help with contact tracing and public alerting in the COVID19 pandemic.

The results are summarised:

(1) A novel framework: The project addressed the critical area of public safety and disaster services by developing a novel framework and system architecture of communication using the latest mobile technologies. The framework details were highly recognised by peer reviewers and published in 10 journal (8 in top-tier IEEE journals) and 12 conference papers

(2) Alerting/safety service: A suite of a centralised software, an efficient database system for managing location information, and a protocol for message forwarding were built to test the alerting services. This novel method allows a user (often a victim who is out of communication range) to communicate through D2D link with another device acting as a relay to the control centre who analyses critical location data and convert it into safety/emergency messages;

(3) A novel hybrid scheme to obtain users’ location data: A proactive approach in which the users’ location is updated prior to any disaster event and a reactive approach where a D2D mode is used right during/after disasters for location updates are combined to enhance the recovery process, increasing the probability of finding the victims despite the damage of communication links. The scheme demo by METU team in Turkey

(4) A prototype: The developed prototype is used for demonstration of the overall system and to test the alerting services. D2D technology allows us to exploit the nature proximity of communicating devices, leading to multiple performance benefits, while relaying technology allows the users in potential danger to be reachable by the control centre when safety issues arise. The prototype proved the system offers safety services that operate automatically by ways of monitoring, collecting location information and providing quick safety/emergency actions;

(5) An Android app: was designed to help monitor, collect, and dispatch safety information to the users.

Prototypes and demos:

We have designed the protocols and apps to carry out services for safety warning and alerting:

  • Overall prototype demo video for the safety and emergency services (carried out by UK team in Hendon, London)
  • Location tracking using hybrid approach (carried out by METU team in Turkey)

Software and source code for apps:

  • Safety alerting system and app: Github
  • Smart database and location tracking hybrid approach: download

Publications

Journal papers:
  1. K. Ali, H. X. Nguyen, Q.-T. Vien, P. Shah, and M. Raza, “Deployment of Drone Based Small Cells for Public Safety Communication System,” IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 2882 – 2891, Jun. 2020. Link
  2. H. Nguyen, T. Nguyen, B. Nguyen. M. Raza, and H. X. Nguyen, “Delay and reliability analysis of p-persistent Carrier Sense Multiple Access for multi-event industrial wireless sensor networks,” IEEE Sensors, 2020, accepted. Link
  3. E. Ever, E. Gemikonakli, H. X. Nguyen, F. Al-Turjman, and A. Yazici, “Performance evaluation of hybrid disaster recovery framework with D2D communications,” Elsevier Computer Communications, vol. 152, pp. 81-92, Feb. 2020.
  4. M. Raza, H. Le-Minh, N. Aslam, S. Hussain, M. Imran, R. Tafazolli and H. X. Nguyen, “Dynamic priority based reliable real-time communications for infrastructure-less networks,” IEEE Access, vol.6, pp. 67338 – 67359, Nov. 2018.
  5. Deebak, B.D., Ever, E. and Al‐Turjman, F., “Analyzing enhanced real‐time uplink scheduling algorithm in 3GPP LTE‐advanced networks using multimedia systems,” Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies, vol. 29, no. 10, p.e3443, 2018.
  6. K. Ali, H. X. Nguyen, Q.-T. Vien, P. Shah, and Z. Chu, “Disaster management using D2D communication with power transfer and clustering techniques,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 14643-14654, 2018
  7. Z. Chu, T. Le, H. X. Nguyen, A. Nallanathan, and M. Karamanoglu, “A Stackelberg-Game Approach for Disaster Recovery Communications Utilizing Cooperative D2D,” IEEE Access, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 10733-10742, Dec. 2018.
  8. Z. Chu, H. X. Nguyen, and G. Caire, “Game Theory-Based Resource Allocation for Secure WPCN Multiantenna Multicasting Systems,” IEEE Trans. Information Forensics and Security, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 926 – 939, Apr. 2018
  9. Z. Chu, H. X. Nguyen, T. Le, M. Karamanoglu, E. Ever, and A. Yazici, “Secure Wireless Powered and Cooperative Jamming D2D Communications,” IEEE Trans. Green Commun. Netw., vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 1-13, Mar. 2018.
  10. F. Al-Turjman, Y. K. Ever, E. Ever, H. X. Nguyen, D. B. David, “Seamless Key Agreement Framework for Mobile-Sink in IoT Based Cloud-Centric Secured Public Safety Sensor Networks,” IEEE Access, vol. 5, pp. 24617-24631, Nov. 2017.
  11. A. Le, Q.-T. Vien, H. X. Nguyen, D. W. K. Ng, and R. Schober, “Robust chance-constrained optimization for power-efficient and secure SWIPT systems,” IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 333-346, Sep. 2017.

Conference papers:

  1. H. Yatbaz, B. Cinar, A. Gokdemir, E. Ever, F. Al-Turjman, H. X. Nguyen, and A. Yazici, “Hybrid approach for disaster recovery using P2P communications in Android, In Proc. of the IEEE Local Computer Networks (LCN), Chicago, USA, 2018
  2. Z. Chu, T. Le, D. To, and H. X. Nguyen, “Sum Throughput Optimization for Wireless Powered Sensor Networks,” in Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM, Singapore, Dec. 2017.
  3. Z. Chu, T. Le, H. X. Nguyen, M. Karamanoglu, Z. Zhu, A. Nallanathan, E. Ever, and A. Yazici, “Robust Design for MISO SWIPT System with Artificial Noise and Cooperative Jamming,” in Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM, Singapore, Dec. 2017.
  4. Z. Chu, H. X. Nguyen, T. Le, M. Karamanoglu, D. To, E. Ever, F. Al-Turjman, and A. Yazici, “D2D Cooperative Communications for Disaster Management,” in Proc. 24th International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT), Cyprus, May 2017, pp. 1-5.
  5. Z. Chu, H. X. Nguyen, T. A. Le, M. Karamanoglu, D. To, E. Ever, and F. M. Al-Tuhman, “Game theory based secure wireless powered D2D communications with cooperative jamming,” in Proc. Wireless Days (WD), Porto, Portugal, Mar. 2017, pp. 1-4.
  6. K. Ali, H. X. Nguyen, P. Shah, Q.-T. Vien, and E. Ever, “D2D multi-hop relaying services towards disaster communication system,” in Proc. IEEE International Workshop on 5G Networks for Public Safety and Disaster Management (IWNDP’17), Limassol, Cyprus, May 2017.
  7. Z. Chu, T. Le, D. To, and H. X. Nguyen, “Sum Throughput Optimization for Wireless Powered Sensor Networks,” in Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM, Singapore, Dec. 2017.
  8. Z. Chu, T. Le, H. X. Nguyen, M. Karamanoglu, Z. Zhu, A. Nallanathan, E. Ever, and A. Yazici, “Robust Design for MISO SWIPT System with Artificial Noise and Cooperative Jamming,” in Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM, Singapore, Dec. 2017.
  9. Z. Chu, T. Le, H. X. Nguyen, A.Nallanathan, and M. Karamanoglu, “Robust Sum Secrecy Rate Optimization for MIMO Two-way Full Duplex Systems,” in Proc. VTC Fall, Toronto, Canada, Sept. 2017, pp. 1-5.
  10. T. A. Le, Q.-T. Vien, T. A. Le, H. X. Nguyen, and R. Schober, “Robust optimization with probabilistic constraints for power-efficient and secure SWIPT,” in Proc. IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM 2016), USA, Dec. 2016.
  11. K. Ali, H. X. Nguyen, P. Shah, and Q.-T. Vien, “Energy efficient and scalable D2D architecture design for public safety network,” in Proc. 2016 International Conference on Advanced Communication Systems and Information Security (ACOSIS’16), Marrakesh, Morocco, Oct. 2016.
  12. K. Ali, H. X. Nguyen, P. Shah, Q.-T. Vien, and N. Bhuvanasundaram, “Architecture for public safety network using D2D communication,” in Proc. IEEE WCNC’2016 Workshop on Communications in Extreme Conditions (ComExCon 2016).

Book Chapters

  1. Ali, Kamran, Huan X. Nguyen, Purav Shah, Quoc-Tuan Vien, and Enver Ever. “Internet of Things (IoT) Considerations, Requirements, and Architectures for Disaster Management System.” In Performability in Internet of Things, pp. 111-125. Springer, Cham, 2019.
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