# RDSP: Rapidly Deployable Wireless Ad Hoc System for Post-Disaster Management
## 1 Introduction  
Cellular telephony is an extensively used communication technology. There are approximately eight billion active cellular subscriptions globally with approximately half of those users added in the last few years, mostly in developing areas [1]. Currently, mobile-cellular subscribers are more than the total population of the world. This is because people enjoy more than one subscription to take advantage of competing data plans of different cellular operators and so forth. Therefore, in many developing areas, cellular networks have replaced conventional landline telephone systems because of easy usage and the low cost of deployment. However, natural or man-made disasters can disrupt or fully destroy the cellular and land line telecommunication infrastructures and services in the effected areas. Recently, in September 2014, Hurricane Odile struck Mexico's Baja California coasts [2]. The hurricane of category four destroyed many towns, causing the massive destruction of the electrical infrastructure that left over 90% of the population without electricity. The destruction of the communication infrastructure resulted in the absence of cooperation between the aid organizations; consequently, thousands of individuals endured hardship, due to mismanaged rescue operations. After the distractions of a disaster, the communication among rescue groups, such as firemen, police officers, and paramedics is vital. In particular, the feedback of first rescue responders is extremely important for an effective rescue and restoration operation. From a networking perspective, the aim is to recover connectivity to offer at least temporary communication services to rescue groups. One way to overcome these issues is to arrange network components, such as relays, access points, or routers to create a temporary network on request [3]. This needs a quickly deployable network to perform the required relief efforts, including helicopters and first responders on the floor that can save many lives. In addition, to guarantee the safety of survivors in the disaster-affected region, it is very important to manage stranded people's requests in a timely manner to provide a general picture of the total injuries, relocation method, emergency needs, and so forth [4; 5]. Furthermore, in an attempt to rapidly handle and deliver food and other resources to displaced inhabitants, the need for a secure and reliable communication network that is easy to deploy and relies on radio waves instead of a data cable would be a good choice for communication in disaster situations [6].  
In this work, we propose a rapidly deployable system using multi-hop relays for a post-disaster wireless ad hoc network, named RDSP. The RDSP aims to reduce the average waiting times for transmitting the rescue groups and victim's location information towards the control server. In addition, the RDSP scheme enables intermediate relay devices to dynamically select their IDs on the basis of the information provided by their neighbor relays and then each intermediate relay selects the best forwarders towards the control server to minimize end-to-end and round-trip message delivery delays. Finally, the client device is used to transmit victim's information via Wi-Fi towards the control server, which then alerts emergency rescue teams to deliver food and other resources to displaced and stuck survivors.  
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 summarizes the related work. Section 3 explains the flow charts and algorithms for the client, relay, and server devices. Section 4 describes the performance evaluation and compares the performance of the RDSP with the existing scheme. Finally, Section 5 provides the concluding remarks.