Tethered system for in situ measurement, communications and data relay in field work and disaster response

Abstract:

Communication relay is a useful tool when doing field work in areas with poor existing communications infrastructure such as mountains or very remote locations as well as in emergency response. Both have similar issues around coordinating teams of people and transmitting data for recording. The ability to use an airborne system in communication relay and data collection is increasingly becoming simpler with the advent of smaller lower power systems. These systems enable the use of smaller and easier to handle airborne platforms as host. This poster documents the use of such systems to provide Armature Radio relay and LoRa communication protocol relay for use in both emergency response and scientific applications. The tethered airborne platform provides an ideal short-term solution to this problem. The use of an airborne communications relay enables increases in coverage area of the voice and data network. They also provide fixed points for local atmospheric measurements in the boundary layer and on the ground. All of which can be either recorded and/or relayed back to a remote computing environment for logging.