A MOBILE-BASED LOCALIZATION SYSTEM FOR INFRASTRUCTURE-INDEPENDENT EMERGENCY COMMUNICATION

After natural or human-made disasters, determining the locations of individuals needing urgent assistance is critical and time-sensitive. This paper introduces a novel ad-hoc infrastructure-less communication system for emergency scenarios, relying solely on basic mobile device capabilities. The proposed approach estimates mobile device coordination using multilateration, incorporating path loss theory to transform receiving signal strength into distance. A least square optimization algorithm is also applied to enhance localization accuracy. The system facilitates coordination and communication among citizens and first responders by strategically positioning a few emergency mobile devices as temporary base stations. Mobile devices search for neighboring base stations and transform into temporary base stations upon finding at least four. Those temporary base stations assist farther mobile devices in localization, creating a cascading effect until no more mobile devices are discovered. Simulation demonstrates robustness with a 97% discovery rate, maintaining accuracy even in environmental noise. While promising, real-world validation is essential to assess performance under diverse conditions and practical feasibility.