Received Signal Strength Indicator for Device Localization in Post Disaster Scenarios

The existing methods for locating trapped victims after earthquakes and similar events is largely restricted to equipment that is expensive, bulky and difficult to mobilise. There is a clear opportunity to develop a system which capitalises on the disadvantages of the existing equipment, whilst also exploiting the prevalence of mobile phones that are routinely carried by people at present. The existing mobile phone based localisation solutions are also quite complex (use computationally complex algorithms, etc.) and consequently quite expensive. Most of the existing search and rescue solutions do not use Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) as a localisation metric because of its unpredictable nature and other associated challenges. On the other hand, the use of RSSI can enable development of cheaper and easily deployable search and rescue solutions. In this paper, by developing a prototype system, we determine the effectiveness of only using RSSI to localize trapped mobile phones in typical post disaster scenarios.