Rapidly Deployable Satellite Communications for Emergency Situations: the WISECOM Trials

This paper presents a general overview of the WISECOM (Wireless Infrastructure over Satellite for Emergency Communications) system, focusing on the trials performed on a specifically developed demonstrator during a live simulation of a disaster event. The WISECOM system is intended to rapidly deploy a complete communications infrastructure in the early hours after a disaster occurs through the integration of several terrestrial networks, such as GSM, WiFi, WiMAX and TETRA, with satellite systems, such as Inmarsat BGAN and DVB-RCS. In order to test the fulfilment of the different capabilities that are required by the system, a demonstrator has been designed, implemented and finally used in a simulation scenario. The architecture of the developed demonstrator is described introducing two versions of the system intended to be used in the different phases after the disaster event. The work details the different capabilities tested on the WISECOM demonstrator, before and during the live simulation, taking into account the drawbacks of already existing solutions for communication in emergency scenarios and analysing the achieved improvements. The main aim of the system is to provide victims and members of rescue forces with voice and data services, such as transmission of images and Location Based Services, in order to improve the coordination of rescue operations and reduce the necessary time until victims receive a proper treatment.