Flying Base station for Temporary Mobile Communications in an Area Affected by a Disaster

During a disaster, smart phones are useful for information distribution and collection, but mobile communication equipment such as base stations may be shut down because of a line down, a power failure or damage to infrastructure. To provide a temporary mobile communication in a disaster area, a mobile operator uses on-truck or on-ship base stations. However, those base stations cannot be implemented in a disaster area if they cannot reach it. To address this situation, base stations on an airborne vehicle such as a helicopter, a drone or a balloon are viable alternatives. In this paper, our approach to having base stations on an airborne vehicle, and assumed applications are shown. The defining feature of our approach is that a temporary communication service can be provided only by some kind of airborne vehicle. Accordingly, we will present our implementation of a base station on a drone and on a helicopter. The evaluations of our implementation in the field are also presented.