Energy‐efficient remote mobile device management in infrastructure‐less environment for emergency assessment

Abstract

SummaryPersonal mobile devices, or PMDs, have the main objective of supporting connectivity in infrastructured network. However, they are rarely researched to support connectivity in infrastructure‐less network environment, particularly in case of no network or when existing network is damaged. This research direction has significant benefit towards emergency management, where PMDs in affected areas can be configured to establish inexpensive infrastructure‐less network for victims' information gathering. Existing PMD configurations techniques either lack flexibility and hinder device reachability or are slow and consume significant energy. These factors have motivated towards the two‐fold contribution proposed in this paper—(1) a novel over‐the‐air mobile device management approach of PMDs to establish multi‐hop infrastructure‐less network and (2) additional over‐the‐air sensing configuration of PMDs to record and transmit incapacitated victims' surrounding conditions using proposed network. These contributions allow multiple PMDs to establish network with minimal time and energy overheads, leading to efficient emergency management. Simulation and testbed results validate proposed approaches.