Applying wireless sensor networks in fire fighting

Abstract

Fire fighters often work in dangerous environments, therefore protection is essential. Nowadays fire fighters are equipped with different types of devices, each of which supplies a specific functionality. This paper studies the possibility of integrating some of these functionalities into one intelligent glove, which has a build-in sensor node. Merging different functionalities into one device will reduce the number of equipments that a fire fighter must carry. The concept of networking the intelligent gloves using Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is validated by doing application requirements analysis, transmission range experiments, and performance evaluations of a dedicated routing protocol. Results show that the IEEE 802.15.4 based WSN can be applied in fire fighting scenarios. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.