Abstract

Locating trapped people under rubble is a key task that first responders must develop as efficiently as possible. Inhospitable and chaotic environments resulting from a natural or human-induced disaster make inappropriate the use of the Global Positioning System, or other semi-infrastructure solution, for localizing survivors due to its limited outdoor operation or low probability of use in ordinary life. This article presents a simple method for locating peers considering IEEE802.11b enabled devices. The method considers the variations produced in Signal Strength between IEEE802.11b enabled devices when the body of a person interrupts their line of sight. As results, empirical models where obtained for distance and angle measurements. Using those models, the error for distance measurements was at most 20m for distances between 1 to 100m, and the error for angle measurements was at most 18° for distances between 1 to 80m, and most 38° for distances between 80 to 100m. In addition those results are used to fundament an extension to a probabilistic detection model. © Springer-Verlag 2004.