DANGER: A drones aided network for guiding emergency and rescue operations

Abstract

Has now become more important than ever to guarantee an always present connectivity to users, especially in emergency scenarios. However, in case of a disaster, network infrastructures are often damaged, with consequent connectivity disruption, isolating users when are more in need for information and help. Drones may supply with a recovery network, thanks to their capabilities to provide network connectivity on the fly. However, users typically need special devices or applications to reach these networks, reducing their applicability and adoption. To tackle this problem we present DANGER, a framework able to create a mesh network of drones, which can be reached by any WiFi smartphone. DANGER is highly flexible and does not require any special application: all connected devices can chat, with voice and videos, through a simple web-application. The DANGER network is completely distributed, can work even partitioned or in case of drones failures.