WirlWind—WIReLess Wide area INciDent network

Emergency responders, whether they are responding to forest fires incidents, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or other emergencies need communication in areas with non-existent or damaged infrastructure. WirlWind is directed at addressing this need by providing an advanced ad hoc communications network from the rear echelons to the front-lines.

Current radio based incident communications systems do not meet this need for the following reasons:

• Limited number and range of frequencies; Interagency cooperation hampered by incompatibilities
• Terrain causes line-of-site issues for communications
• Voice capability only - Few data transmit/receive devices
• Do not support the need for extendibility and future expansion and growth

The WirlWind research and development effort leverages three existing ATCorp technologies (SARA, MobiWeb and GeoTIDeS) with newly developed multiband ad hoc communication technology to address these concerns by providing:

• Voice/data transmit/receive capability
• IP connectivity from end-to-end; Multi-radio and Multi-frequency band ad hoc networking (beyond-line-of-site via multihop routing)
• 3x and greater range improvement over 802.11b/g (WiFi) data networks
• Compatibility with 802.11b/g COTS products
• Geolocation information dissemination system
• A moving map showing the locations of all tracked personnel
• Automatic encoding of location and time into all information transmitted

The goal of WirlWind is to provide safer environments and better intelligence to all levels of incident management. WirlWind has been endorsed by the National Wildfire Coordination Group (NWCG), USDA Forest Service, and the US DoI BIA.