1. 1 Electrical and Computer Engineering R. F. I. D. Rescuing Firefighters in Distress Team Ganz: Jonathan Bruso Michael Carney Daniel Fortin James Schafer

2. 2 Electrical and Computer Engineering Background and Motivation:  Firefighters have an enormous task and endanger their life when going into burning buildings Most of the time they have never been in the building Visibility skewed by smoke There is nothing keeping track of where a firefighter is Trapped and needs help Lost in building  A device that can track firefighters in a building could aid in directing as well as finding firefighters in a building

3. 3 Electrical and Computer Engineering Background and Motivation:  Many firefighter have perished after becoming lost or unconscious in a burning building.  Worcester, MA 1999 Six firefighters were killed after becoming lost in a six story building while trying to save homeless inhabitants.  Bronx, NY 2006 One firefighter killed and three seriously injured when roof of building collapsed on them. Took a significant amount of time to locate their distress signals.  Charleston, SC 2007 Nine firefighters killed in a Sofa Store blaze. They became trapped when part of the building collapsed and they could not be located.

4. 4 Electrical and Computer Engineering Concept:  Lives would be saved if there is a way to track a firefighters location inside a building Person in build with question mark over head

5. 5 Electrical and Computer Engineering Current Technologies:  On Site Emergency Resource Tracking (OnSite ERT) Firefighters drop boxes in and around building Firefighter are equipped with a monitoring system. PC accessible interface for commander.

6. 6 Electrical and Computer Engineering OnSite ERT Pros & Cons  Pros Gives an GUI display of the incident and personal on hand Can track firefighters location and vitals Gives a well documented time-stamped information on what occurred at the incident  Cons Uses GPS and safelight databases (subscription fees) Suitcase unit is expensive Does not give a view of the incident inside the building

7. 7 Electrical and Computer Engineering System Requirements:  Has to be able to track firefighters in the building Show firefighters path over time Alert Incident Commander (IC) if firefighter has not moved for fixed period of time Warn IC if firefighter is moving out of the Tag range.  Store these locations in a database  Dynamically display firefighters position on a visual blueprint of the building  Critical System, must be able to detect and recover from error quickly  User Friendly

8. 8 Electrical and Computer Engineering Idea #1: Digital Representation with Scanners  Cons  Scanners have a high cost  ~$700  Big Building = $$$  Must be used sparsely  Loss of Scanner means loss of precision

9. 9 Electrical and Computer Engineering Idea #2: Digital Representation with Tags  Pros  Tags have low cost  ~$18  Decreased scalability cost  Increased precision  Loss of a Tag does not entail critical error  Mobile scanner is less prone to destruction

10. 10 Electrical and Computer Engineering System Block Diagram:

11. 11 Electrical and Computer Engineering The basic User Interface (UI) Design

12. 12 Electrical and Computer Engineering The basic User Interface (UI) Design:  Locations Displayed on pre- loaded blueprint  Traveled paths can be viewed  Incident Commander (IC) can relay positional information via radio

13. 13 Electrical and Computer Engineering UI With Path Selected

14. 14 Electrical and Computer Engineering How is location determined?  Trilateration is used to determine the position based on simultaneous length measurements from three known sites (Nodes A, B and C) The point where the three circles intersect is the desired coordinate More circles could be used to reduce error

15. 15 Electrical and Computer Engineering Signal Strength to Distance conversion  Radio waves diminish logarithmically with distance  Tag distance (d) may be calculated as a function of: Signal strength (sT) Carrier frequency (fc) Signal strength exponent (n) sT = 20*log(f c )+ 10*n*log(d) – 28 Equation from Retscher, Fu, www.http://www.mycoordinates.org/may08/trilateration.phpwww.http://www.mycoordinates.org/may08/trilateration.php ITU Indoor Location Model Distance

16. 16 Electrical and Computer Engineering Location of tag from Trilateration  Algorithm Signal strength gives distances Distances give equations for three spheres Spheres can be equated to find location of reader  Sources of error Walls Multiple floors Wave interference

17. 17 Electrical and Computer Engineering Math behind Trilateration  Trilateration can be expressed as the problem of finding the intersection of three spheres. Equation from Thomas, Ros, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=01391018  Note that the solution depends on the chosen reference frame.  Usually one of the nodes is placed at the origin to simplify the calculations

18. 18 Electrical and Computer Engineering Dealing with error  Error solutions Calibrate signal strength variation before entry into building Calibrate variation for different building materials Use ITU Indoor Calibration Model

19. 19 Electrical and Computer Engineering Additional Tag Applications  Distress Tags Located in hot spots across building where those in distress can obtain in order to be rescued Pros: Can give a general location of person in distress Finding a person in distress would be much faster and more direct Cons: The tags could be false alarms Person holding tag could be moving Currently being researched

20. 20 Electrical and Computer Engineering Additional Tag Possibilities cont..  Point of Interest tags (PoI) Carried by firefighters and can be thrown down to point out a particular point of interest or a certain path Pros Important points in a building can be highlighted A trail could be left to help guide firefighters to safety Cons Tags will need to be carried in a signal blocking pouch or they will interfere with the scanners Currently undergoing research

21. 21 Electrical and Computer Engineering Database Functionality  Stores incoming point data of each fireman within the building  Stores pre-existing data of stationary RFID tags  Stores blueprints/building information  Must be fast and reliable  Due to budget constraint a laptop will be used in place of a real server

22. 22 Electrical and Computer Engineering General Attribute Tables:  These tables contain the pre-instantiated general attributes of the Active tags and Scanners Tag IDGen. LocX-cordY-cord 0x0001Hallway100245 0x0002Kitchen455103 0x0003Office 009102250 General Attribute Table Makeup FF IDNameSignal Str 0x0001Ortiz.86 0x0002Lowell.56 Fireman Attribute Table

23. 23 Electrical and Computer Engineering Collected Positioning Table  A general layout of the positioning table below  This table lists all tags positions given with respect to time  Updated frequently with new coordinates  Various Queries can be used to get certain tags, paths, floors, ect… FF IDX-CordY-CordTime 0x01310024515:59:06 0x01745510315:59:07 0x01310225015:59:09 0x0145260015:59:11 0x0139925615:59:13

24. 24 Electrical and Computer Engineering Challenges  Trilateration Algorithm Formula seems straight forward Indoor scenario causes problems interference and RF propagation Errors accumulate fast. Correlating the signal strength to distance Position Calibration

25. 25 Electrical and Computer Engineering Challenges cont…  Incident Commander GUI Must display in Real Time On the fly path animation and image generation is difficult.  Using Pre-Inputted Blueprint Displaying firefighters “relative” tag position to absolute blueprint position. Must use GPS to provide this association Coordinating blueprint with error checking Making sure firefighter does not “walk through walls”

26. 26 Electrical and Computer Engineering Proposed MDR Deliverables  Incident Commander GUI Use mock data inside database to simulate GUI Able to see location of Firefighter on blueprint Ability to show the total path traveled (with timestamps)  RFID Reader and Tags Purchase Research SDK and Trilateration Algorithms Begin experimentation with point location and error correction

27. 27 Electrical and Computer Engineering Division of Labor  Jon Bruso Interactive Incident Commander GUI, blueprint generation software, on the fly image generation  Mike Carney Trilateration Algorithm, On the fly path(animation) generation  Dan Fortin Purchase RFID equipment, GPS location integration, and Trilateration Algorithm  James Schafer Database creation and management, coordinating relative RFID positions with blueprint

28. 28 Electrical and Computer Engineering Final Deliverables  Design documents and specifications  Blueprint generation software  Incident Commander GUI Path and Point Display With timestamps Firefighter’s signal strength warning Ability to track multiple Firefighters  Demonstrate tracking a RFID reader throughout a location on campus.