Whether in a smoke-filled building, a tunnel, or a forest, WISPER tracks firefighters’ presence and health signs for up to 150 feet.
Despite the ubiquity of digital communications devices today, with few exceptions, firefighters still rely on 20th century radios, whose outdated analog signals have trouble penetrating debris and concrete. When a firefighter enters a smoke-filled building, tunnel, or forest, UHF radio or even a GPS satellite signal won’t follow. The firefighters vanish from the map.
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(Top-left) A network of inch-square routers keeps signals strong around concrete and steel. (Center-left) When cued, a motor-powered dispenser will drop a WISPER node. (Bottom-left) A base monitors strength, reroutes traffic, and drops nodes. (Right) Firefighters can be warned if a dispenser is running low. (Photos courtesy of Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate.) |
Working together, they could lead to a life-saving solution.
Back at the fire truck, GLANSER’s signals are received and transmitted by a small, USB-powered base station plugged into a laptop. As firefighters move from room to room and floor to floor, the laptop animates their every step.
A self-powered router that can take the heat is needed. S&T, consequently, is developing a tiny, one-inch square, ½-inch thick, throwaway router that’s waterproof and heat resistant up to 500°F. The Wireless Intelligent Sensor Platform for Emergency Responders (WISPER) contains a two-way digital radio, an antenna, and a 3-volt lithium cell.
HOW IT WORKS
To extract the most life from the router’s tiny battery, WISPER uses a simple, low-power communications protocol, ZigBee. ZigBee is tortoise-slow by design–trading speed for battery life, telegraphing no more than 100 kilobits per second (kbps). It is more than 99 percent slower than WiFi.
“Throw in smoke, firehose mist, stairwells, and walls, and you’re down to maybe 10 kbps. But that’s fast enough to tell an incident commander the whereabouts (via GLANSER) and health (via PHASER) of every firefighter in the blaze,” explains Jalal Mapar, WISPER’s project manager in S&T’s Infrastructure Protection and Disaster Management Division. “We’re not streaming video that needs a lot of bandwidth, just vital signs and coordinates.”
WISPER’s router, dispenser, and tiny USB base station were developed by Oceanit Laboratories, Inc., of Honolulu, and the University of Virginia’s (UVA/ Department of Computer Science under an S&T Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
In March 2011, Oceanit and UVA demonstrated WISPER for S&T at a FEMA office in Arlington, Virginia. Simulating a squad of firefighters, three router-bearing researchers fanned out, dodging around corners, stepping down stairwells. In test after test, their signals stayed strong, even at up to 150 feet.
For additional information, e-mail st.snapshots@hq.dhs.gov.