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ITL Establishes a Distributed Testbed for 1st Responders

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NIST's Information Technology Laboratory has been working on novel communications and networking technologies for 1st responders over the past several months. The ITL effort is part of a larger NIST wide project titled "NIST Distributed Testbed for 1st Responders" involving Information Technology Laboratory (ITL), Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BFRL), and Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory( MEL). The overarching goal of this project is to save lives at times of natural or man-made emergencies by equipping 1st responders with highly capable systems and gear based on latest technological advances. The unfortunate attacks of 9/11 brought to forefront the shortcomings of the equipment presently used by 1st responders. It is widely believed that there is a wide gap between what's presently available to 1st responders and what could be developed based on today's technology. Much can be done in these areas to improve the status quo, and NIST plans to play a major role in this space.

ITL's Advanced Network Technologies Division (ANTD) has contributed to the proposed "NIST Distributed Testbed for 1st Responders" in the following ways:

1. ANTD has built a wireless ad hoc network (WANET) consisting of Compaq iPAQ Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) running on the Linux operating system and equipped with IEEE 802.11b WLAN cards that demonstrates how the 1st responders could communicate with each other at an emergency site as well as with those outside of their WANET. The network requires no prior infrastructure, and it self-organizes once the 1st responders converge on a disaster site. It reorganizes automatically every time a node leaves the network (perhaps due to getting destroyed or due to actual physical departure of the person carrying the associated radio / handheld terminal). As such, it is resilient to node and link failures, and its performance degrades gracefully in face of such events. The network uses multi-hop communications to carry all sort of traffic, such as full-duplex voice, video, text and sensor data. That is, any message to be transmitted from a node A to another node B may go through several intermediary nodes. This helps greatly with conserving the battery power at each node, reducing interference for other communications taking place throughout the network, and hence increasing the traffic carrying capacity of the network. ANTD's use of the IEEE 802.11b technology in the testbed is for proof of concept purposes. Future standards for 1st responder communications and networking will be based on other varieties of wireless technology.
2. ANTD has developed a method by which the above network could determine at any given time the locations of all assets of interest, such as the 1st responders themselves and any civilians trapped at the disaster site. While the Global Positioning System (GPS) provides that functionality in an outdoor environment where one has line of sight (LOS) communication with GPS satellites, other solutions are needed for the much harder indoor localization problem. Our system relies on a number of stationary IEEE 802.11b WLAN nodes with known locations to determine the locations of the mobile nodes. This allows tracking the 1st responders and knowing which are inside a building on fire or under a terrorist attack, and it facilitates managing the disaster at hand.
3. ANTD has carried out some experimentation with smart sensor networks based on WANET concepts. This includes work on collaborative signal processing algorithms that combine data from sensors of different types (heat, smoke, chemical, etc) to arrive at more detailed information about the disaster and its evolution than can be obtained from single sensors, such as today's smoke detectors.

Several BFRL and MEL divisions are also taking part in building the NIST Distributed Testbed for 1st Responders. BFRL's Building Environment Division has developed a Virtual Cybernetic Building Testbed (VCBT) simulator, which can emulate the performance of sensors, controls, HVAC systems, and entire buildings under both normal and adverse conditions (e.g., a fire, CBR attack, bomb threat, etc.). The VCBT can be used for simulating emergency situations in buildings, monitoring/evaluating the actions of emergency personnel at the building site, and for evaluating their information needs. BFRL's Fire Research Division has developed a set of icons and visual aid tools to show status of fire(s) in a building. Such information is displayed on subpanels on each floor of the building, and it is also desirable to convey such information, in the easy to read style that NIST has developed, and building floor plans to 1st responders en route to the building. MEL's Manufacturing Metrology Division has been involved in developing standards for sensors. Most of their activities and the industry have focused on wired sensors so far and this has resulted in development of the IEEE 1451 Smart Transducer Interface Standard. However, work is underway to develop a wireless version of the IEEE 1451 standard and NIST is involved in this process. All these components will be integrated in the "NIST Distributed Testbed for 1st Responders" within the next several months.