5/18/051

WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Fire Fighter Location Tracking & StatusMonitoring Performance Requirements

John A. Orr and David Cyganski

orr@wpi.edu, cyganski@wpi.eduElectrical and Computer Engineering Department

Worcester Polytechnic InstituteWorcester, MA 01609

http://www.ece.wpi.edu

5/18/052

WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

On December 3, 1999

Six fire fighters lost their lives in a tragic cold storagewarehouse fire in the City of Worcester,Massachusetts. Two fire fighters initially got lost andthen two search teams also became lost in the mazeand zero visibility from the dense smoke resulting inthe six deaths. One of the recommendations of NIOSHand a separate internal review of the circumstances ofthe fire was:– Manufacturers and research organizations

should conduct research into refining existingand developing new technology to track themovement of fire fighters on the fire ground.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Personnel Location

Several technologies can be brought to bear on this problem,ultimately resulting in a wearable device, which will:

Identify the current location of each rescue team member (inthree dimensions) to the incident command post outside thebuilding,

Provide status (health and motion) information on each teammember, and on conditions in the exit path

Provide emergency exit guidance (back-tracking) (perhaps viasynthesized voice commands), and to the command post,

Provide location precision of +/- 1 ft, (necessitated toprosecute rescue operations in which the question "on whichside of the wall are they?" can be crucial)

Provide integration with other incident managementcommunications.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Overview, Firefighter Locator System

GPS Signal

Personnel Unit

Reference Unit,known location

Command and Control Unit

Phys Monitor

Reference Unit,known location

Reference Unit,known location

GPS referencePositioning signalSystem controlUser-Commander link

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Real-Time Deployable Personnel Geolocation

Vehicles (red)driveup to a buildinganduse reference units(blue) to locateand display tracksof fire fighters.Exits and otherkey buildingfeatures may be“marked” on thefly.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

… using telemetry from dropped sensors ...

Sensors may be deployedby the fire fighters that monitor conditions andupdate tracks to indicatepaths that may not beretraced (red).

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

… automatically computing escape routes ...

Escape routes can beintelligently computedand displayed that takeinto account impassiblepaths (green). This information may beautomatically passedto the fire fighter ascomputer generatedaudio instructions ona private communicationschannel.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

… with GIS (Geographic Info. Sys.) overlays.

If GIS information suchas complete floor plansare available, they canbe integrated with thetrack display to assistroute planning and other time-criticaldecisions.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Two kinds of location system now available

Global-scale outdoor-only systems with commonextraterrestrial infrastructure– 3D GPS and DGPS systems with 10 to 30 meter

accuracy.

Room-scale, short-range indoor systems with in-place site-calibrated infrastructure– Usually combines 2-D range-range or range-angle

location units with pre-wired infrastructure located invirtually every compartment of the coverage space.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Example short-range systems

Shipboard personnel locator: transponder inevery compartment

Health care facilities: may pre-wire the facilitywith transponders and/or guard only the exits

Inventory management: more benignenvironment, often very short range

Technologies developed for each of these systemscan contribute to the Firefighter Locator system

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Needed: Fire Fighter Location System

Operations-scale, medium-range, rapidlydeployable system for emergent situations

Requires high-precision 3D location Auto-calibration for Rapid Deployment Reliability in the face of component failures GIS integration Decision Support Capabilities

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Locator System Requirements DraftOverall System

Number of dimensions: 3 Accuracy: +/- 1 ft Maximum range: 2000 ft Max number of simultaneous users: 100 Fundamental capabilities:

– 3-D location of each user relative to a chosen reference point– Relative locations among users– Graphical display at base station– Graphical path information on all users– Self rescue information to users (audio)

Enhancements:– Physiologic information telemetry– Integration with stored databases: geographic and structural

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Locator System Requirements DraftPersonal Unit

Max size: 30 in3

Battery life: 50 hrs + Environmental specs:

– Temperature range : ?– Shock: ?

Positioning/donning requirements on user: none Startup/setup procedure: none (power switch?) Each unit contains unique identifier code Physiological information telemetry: ? Integrated with present turn-out equipment Headset (optional) for self-rescue voice synthesis Integrated with communications gear?

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Locator System Requirements DraftBase Station

Components:– Command/Control unit, Reference units

Command/control unit– Graphical display: Plan, elevation views of users, selectable path

display for each user, with floor plan overlays if available– Integrated with communications gear?

Reference Units– Small (1 ft3), truck-mounted and/or hand-carried into position

Overall Architecture– Self-configuring, fault-tolerant network for positioning and data

communications

Note: Base station configuration is dependent ontechnology choices

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Technical Challenges

Multipath: the indoor radio environment is much moreproblematic than the outdoor situation. Signal reflectionspose a fundamental issue with respect to precision oflocation.

Portability and quick set-up: The goal is for the responsevehicles to drive to the incident site and be ready to gowith the geolocation system. The most significantproblem is reference initialization (site self-calibration).

Size, cost: make maximal use of commercial modules tominimize cost while minimizing size.

Usability: Human factors and software engineering tomaximize usability with relationship to existing GISinformation.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Typical Geolocation Technologies GPS approach

– Insufficient resolution (10 m), insufficient signal strengthin buildings and multi-path degraded

Range-only or range/angle information– Does not present 3-D solution for multilevel structures

Inertial navigation– Extremely expensive and absolute position estimate drift

Dead reckoning (pedometer devices)– Rapid absolute position degradation and no 3-D

“Homing”– Not sufficient for “maze” navigation need in a rescue

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Candidate Technologies

Smart Self-Extending Network approach– A highly redundant network of inter-communicating repeaters is

created on-the-fly to automatically build zero multi-path cells. Thecentral control unit directs personnel to drop repeaters whereappropriate.

Enhanced Differential GPS approach– Use high-order spectral processing techniques to leverage multi-

link diversity as a multi-path solution. Smart Antennas, Super-resolution and Adaptive DSP

– Use adaptive algorithms to reduce and ameliorate multipath. Ultra wideband signal approach

– Obtain high-resolution and multi-path immunity throughproperties of new UWB signals/systems.

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Research

A complete solution to multipath mitigation and highresolution location for operations-scale geolocation requiresrecently developed and new signal processing andinformation fusion algorithms combined with emergingUWB technology.

At WPI, to form reliable (zero drop-out) and accurate (sub-meter) position estimates, our faculty with research expertisein mobile information systems, automatic target recognitionand signal processing have identified key technologies:

“Super-resolution" and “Direction of Arrival" based signalextraction technology developed by the radar and automatictarget recognition research communities

COFDM technology and smart antenna systems developedby the mobile communications industry

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Related WPI Faculty Research Centers

The Center for Firesafety Studies– one of the world's leading laboratories for R&D in

topics including combustion/explosion phenomena,fire and smoke performance of structures, andfiresafety design.

The Fire Protection Engineering Program– the first Fire Protection MS program in the US was

established at WPI in 1979, and the first US Ph.D.program was added in 1991),

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Related WPI Faculty Research Centers

Center for Wireless Information Network Studies– Mobile communications and indoor geo-location

Satellite Navigation Lab– Global positioning systems

Machine Vision Lab– Radar/Sonar signal processing and Automatic Target

Recognition Convergent Technologies Center,

– Networking, Distributed computing and fault tolerance NECAMSID: The New England Center for Analog

and Mixed Signal Integrated Circuit Design– RF/Microwave analog design

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WPI Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Other Applications

Law enforcement: Monitoring of police officerlocation indoors and outdoors

Hostage situations Military, particularly urban operations