Opportunistic Multi-Technology Cooperative Scheme and UAV Relaying for Network Disaster Recovery

Disaster scenarios are particularly catastrophic in urban environments, which are very densely populated in many cases. Disasters not only endanger the life of people, but also affect the existing communication infrastructures. In fact, such an infrastructure could be completely destroyed or damaged; even when it continues working, it suffers from high access demand to its limited resources within a short period of time. This work evaluates the performances of smartphones and leverages the ubiquitous presence of mobile devices in urban scenarios to assist search and rescue activities following a disaster. Specifically, it proposes a collaborative protocol that opportunistically organizes mobile devices in multiple tiers by targeting a fair energy consumption in the whole network. Moreover, it introduces a data collection scheme that employs drones to scan the disaster area and to visit mobile devices and collect their data in a short time. Simulation results in realistic settings show that the proposed solution balances the energy consumption in the network by means of efficient drone routes and smart self-organization, thereby effectively assisting search and rescue operations.