Author: Ali Bodrees
Bodrees, Ali, 2016 Radio Performance Testing for Disaster Communication, Flinders University, School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
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Establishing a quick, safe and reliable communication system is very important during a disaster, as having prompt communication available with relief workers can save the lives of many people in such situations. It is also one of the key requirements of a disaster management system. In this project we have evaluated the performance of two available off-the-shelf UHF radios, the RFD900 and RFD900+, which can be used in a Wi-Fi mesh environment to establish communication systems in case of a disaster. The performance of the radios was evaluated on Brighton Beach for various power levels, distances and data rates. A laptop connected to the radios was used for the experiment. The antenna was mounted at ground level at a height of 0.5 metres from the ground for these tests. The performance showed the feasibility of good quality communication up to a distance of 3 km for the RFD900+ radio. The performance comparison between the RFD900 and RFD900+ showed that the RFD900+ provides a better performance, making it more suitable for use in disaster recovery communications.
Keywords: Radio performance testing of RFD900+,Comparing between the performance of RFD900+ and RFD900, Maximum distance of both radios with low power.
Subject: Engineering thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2016
School: School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Supervisor: Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen