Smart firefighter protective suit - functional blocks and technologies

This paper presents a research focused on a smart textile-based protective system which is intended to bring more safety to firefighters facing hazardous conditions. The system is fully integrated into a firefighter protective suit and it is able to monitor heart rate, to detect movements of a firefighter, to detect toxic and combustible gases in the environment and to measure temperature and relative humidity inside and outside of the suit. The protective system consists of developed integrated sensor modules, e-textile wiring harnesses, suit control unit, commander control unit, body area network and wide area network as well. The protective system also include indoor and outdoor localization units. The indoor localization unit based on inertial sensors, which is placed on a protective boot, is determined for the remote tracking of firefighters in situations when GPS signal is missing. The main goal of this system is to increase more firefighter safety.