The Serval Mesh Extender: Using OpenWrt to support disaster communications
Channel: Adjy Leak
Date: 2016-10-13

The Serval Project has for the past six years been working to create infrastructure-free mobile telecommunications systems, so that people can communicate anywhere, anytime. The progressive locking down of mobile operating systems with regard to their ability for form ad-hoc mobile networks (Symbian, early versions of Windows Mobile and Android all supported this capability), has led us to creating a low-cost OpenWRT-based device that allows nearby mobile telephones to form mobile ad-hoc networks. By incorporating UHF, VHF and/or HF radio modules, these Serval Mesh Extender devices are able to facilitate the formation of mobile ad-hoc networks spanning many kilometres. This talk will discuss the Serval Project, the Serval Mesh Extender, its use of OpenWRT, the challenges ahead, as well as our existing trial activities in the Australian Outback, and more recently, the pilot that we will be running in the South Pacific with the support of Australia's foreign humanitarian aid program, AusAID. This will include a discussion of the current process we are going through of having designed and manufactured our own custom OpenWRT-based hardware, including a number of design trade-offs that we have had to make for budgetary, and regulatory reasons, in part due to the unique challenges that rapid international humanitarian deployments trigger.

Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen, Flinders University, The Serval Project and TU-Darmstadt
OpenWrt Summit 2016 - Berlin