Man-made and natural disasters require an immediate response to save lives and property.
The flag goes up, the horn goes off or the Emergency Notification System is activated, in all cases a major event is expected or has occurred and first responders are being deployed. However with today’s infrastructure focused networking, the question is will they have the communication tools required to meet the challenges they will face?
Another 9/11 type of tragedy, Mother Nature’s fury or just bird bridging transformer contacts, odds are there will be significant, if not total loss in telecommunications service; in that case emergency personnel will need to provide their own communication network.
Consequently there is a need for a comprehensive emergency networking/communication solution that allows authorities to adequately prepare for, ride out, and ultimately overcome, these events.
Challenges
It’s easy to setup a tent, some tables and chairs, but what about the network? Are you going to be pulling cables and plugging in switches? How many networking devices will be required? What types of network services are required? These are the challenges that must be planned for and they fall into 3 areas:
- Rapid Deployability
- High Reliability
- Support for Secure Voice, Video and Data services
Deployability
In an emergency first responders deploy in minutes, emergency communication systems cannot take hours to deploy. Immediate communication services are required to assist those impacted, those on scene and those in support functions that require real-time information so the right resources, can be deployed to the right locations within tight time constraints. In situations when minutes can mean the difference between life and death, taking hours to deploy a communications lifeline is not an option.
Network Reliability
Disasters can occur at any time and can last from hours to months so emergency communications systems must be extremely reliable to provide services required as long as required. As result network reliability is a primary concern and levels or resiliency is required so availability assurance features must be integrated in.
Services On Scene commanders may or may not have basic phone services, however even if they do the available bandwidth with be significantly reduced due to sharing of undamaged resources. Having the ability to provide reliable voice and data communications to their team will be key. Additional capabilities such as video for face to face communication, video streaming or even to assist with medical services could be life saving. Adding the ability to restrict and secure the communication channel is also required.
Solution
What is required is an encompassing communication solution that offers portability via most common transportation methods, fast and simple deployability, ability to support all required applications securely and the ability to provide sufficient coverage to meet the vast majorities of deployment scenarios.
The Xirrus RDK solution is a unique and cost effective mobile solution for emergency response, allowing quick and easy setup at a deployed site. Designed to meet the requirements of corporations, the public safety agencies and the military, the RDK is lightweight, portable and robust, providing a complete suite of communication capabilities for up to 100s of users per device.
With a fully integrated design delivering a coverage range well beyond typical wireless access points, the Wi-Fi Array is the only solution of its kind for setting up a pervasive wireless network with such simplicity.