EU - EUROPCOM - Emergency Ultrawideband RadiO for Positioning and COMmunications

In emergency situations, particularly within smoke filled, partially or completely collapsed large buildings, communications with rescue personnel can be difficult. Safety & co-ordination of the operations is hampered by a lack of knowledge of the location of emergency staff. The project will investigate & demonstrate the use of UltraWideBand (UWB) radio, to allow the precise location of personnel to be measured & displayed in a control centre & simultaneously improve communications reliability. The feasibility of using UWB to search for survivors in smoke filled rooms or buried beneath rubble & to generate simple maps will also be investigated.