IEEE Access (Jan 2019)

Towards Debris Information Analysis and Abstraction for Wi-Fi Radar Edge in Collapsed Structures

  • Muhammad Faizan Khan,
  • Guojun Wang,
  • Md. Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2954281
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7
pp. 168075 – 168090

Abstract

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Structural collapses are widespread, owing to a surge in climatic changes, earthquakes, and terrorism. Therefore, there are some technological rescue methods in practice that involve sensors, radars, cameras, microphones, and robots. However, deployment of these techniques faces at least one issue amongst cost, availability, and technical expertise, which limits their application in developing countries. So, there is a dire need for a low-cost and easy deployable rescue method. Recently, we witnessed an increasing trend of using Wi-Fi radios as sensing modality for various applications, including breathing detection and localization, thus leading to device-free communication. Based on this, we may envisage having a Wi-Fi rescue solution. However, Wi-Fi signals cannot easily penetrate through collapsed structures due to the multilayered obstacle scenario. So, in this study, we focus our research on the proper information analysis and abstraction of debris and also present the possible methodology to have better coverage for Wi-Fi signals using Wi-Fi radar edge. We define two objectives of this work; 1) debris information analysis and 2) the Wi-Fi signal propagation mechanism, respectively. We achieve our first goal by conducting site surveys of earthquake-hit areas that enable us to analyze the causes and types of structural collapses followed by debris concept selection model. We employ a bijective soft set approach to accurately select the debris based on the complexity and nature of structural engineering followed. Moreover, we use the Wi-Fi Halow radar edge for wireless signal propagation and perform extensive simulations at low power. Finally, we compare both methods and discuss prospects.

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