5G-enabled Indoor Positioning System for Firefighters using UAVs (5G-IPS)

George Mason University

In June 2022, George Mason University (GMU) was awarded nearly $1.2M for the Public Safety Innovation Accelerator Program 2022 (PSIAP-2022) funding opportunity. 

A precise indoor geo-location (or positioning) system is a crucial requirement in emergency response scenarios, such as the case of firefighting. Being aware of team members’ locations is essential for effective rescue mission management. Another key requirement is to reliably and quickly disseminate the firefighters’ position information to the key incident-commanders, for example, to warn a first responder who is in danger or to direct a first responder to rescue a person who is incapacitated. Finally, it is beneficial to create an accurate mapping and visualization of the building layout. In this project, GMU proposes to design, prototype, and demonstrate a highly precise 5G-based Indoor Positioning System (5G-IPS) using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that addresses the above three long-standing and difficult challenges by utilizing emerging 5G network features: 5G NR positioning, network slicing, open radio access network (O-RAN) architecture, mobile edge computing (MEC), and rapidly deployable UAVs.

Meet the team

George Mason University’s team is made of the following key personnel:

• Vijay K. Shah, Principal Investigator, has significant research experience in wireless communications, PHY and MAC layer design, O-RAN architecture, and AI for wireless. He has ample experience in wireless software development, open-source cellular software, such as srsRAN, and SDRs. He has experience with mounting and measuring 5G user equipment (UEs) on UAVs and has performed such experiments in conjunction with the Mitre Corporation.
• R. Michael Buehrer, Co-Principal Investigator, is a professor at Virginia Tech and an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to wideband signal processing in communications and geolocation. Buehrer has worked on geolocation for over 15 years and is the co-author of a popular handbook on positioning. He has authored dozens of papers in the area of localization and is the co-inventor on three patents on cellular-based positioning.
• Jeffrey H. Reed, Co-Principal Investigator, is an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to SDR and communication signal processing and leadership in engineering education. He teaches SDR and Cellular Radio and authored one of the first SDR textbooks and, with NT, the first multimedia eBook on 5G. In addition, he co-founded Federated Wireless, which focuses on spectrum sharing for 5G.
• Nishith Tripathi, Co-Principal Investigator, has 24 years of industry experience at Nortel Networks, Huawei Technologies, and Samsung Research America. He has co-authored the cellular industry’s first-ever multimedia book on 5G, a textbook on Cellular Communications, and a pioneering monograph on the applications of AI in cellular networks. Tripathi has contributed to the 3GPP 5G specifications and carried out the design, operations, testing, and optimization of commercial wireless networks.
• David Povlitz, Public Safety Organization Partner, has 25+ years of experience in fire, rescue, and emergency medical services and was appointed as the Fire Chief of the Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) in Virginia in November of 2018. ACFD has nine stations with 375 employees. Povlitz’s background covers a range of areas, including budget development, information technology integration, emergency communications, training, and emergency management support. He also is an experienced incident commander, planning, and operations section chief for large-scale incidents and complex events.

Project overview

Together with Virginia Tech, and Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD), George Mason University (GMU)  proposes to design, prototype and demonstrate a highly precise 5G-based Indoor Positioning System (5G-IPS) that addresses three long-standing and difficult challenges in emergency environments (i) global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and traditional global positioning system (GPS) do not work reliably in indoor setting, (ii) reliable communication infrastructure may not always be available, and (ii) accurate mapping and visualization of the building map may not be available.

UAVs mounted with 5G base stations or user equipment [UEs]) will be utilized for enabling cellular-based (viz. 5G NR) positioning along with specific enhancements to precisely localize firefighters within a building. Shah and his collaborators will then utilize a key 5G capability, called network slicing, to securely, reliably, and timely disseminate the time-critical position information (and other important audio/video or sensor information) from firefighters to the safety stakeholders that need to know it. Following this, a mapping and visualization tool will be prototyped to accurately track the position of firefighters within the visual 3D map of the building. The 5G-IPS system will be demonstrated in-lab using NextG Wireless Lab@Mason’s 5G O-RAN testbed and two other 5G wireless testbeds at Virginia Tech, followed by in-field building test setting in collaboration with Arlington County Fire Department.

The proposed 5G-IPS system will enable a new capability that allows much greater situation awareness of first responders that are in harm's way by knowing their precise location, collaborating in indoor map building, and communicating seamlessly among key first responders.

Potential impacts of the project

The proposed 5G-IPS system will enable a new capability that allows much greater situational awareness of first responders that are in harm's way by knowing their precise location, collaborating in indoor map building, and communicating seamlessly among key first responders.

Using the 5G-IPS system, rescuers/first responders can be better coordinated, commanded, and guided, thus, reducing the possibility of disorientation or failures in localizing victims, and saving both victims and rescuers’ lives.