Indoor emergency navigation is one of the most prominent aspects of building design. Some of the major indoor emergency circumstances are fire hazards, intruder attack and break down of building in case of earth quake. In this research fire hazard is deliberated as indoor emergency and research focuses on efficient navigation of occupants during smoke and fire hazards. Fatalities occur in emergency due to inadequate information of hazard location and occupant’s unawareness to nearest egress point. This research proposes and implements an algorithm for indoor emergency navigation using wireless sensor networks (WSN). Algorithm primarily focus on furnishing safe available escape path-ways to occupants. Further algorithm calculates the shortest escape path from fire affected areas to the indoor exit point. These critical environments expects precise data possession and rapid response from detectors. Wireless smoke sensor node detects smoke events and sends information wirelessly to the base station. A base station comprises graphical user interface (GUI), implemented based on proposed algorithm. GUI is responsible to trace the disaster point, to evaluate the safe available paths and to compute the shortest path way from disaster point to the indoor exit point. Two scenarios of disasters such as smoke at single point ant smoke at multiple points are discussed in the experimental case studies. Eventually average system response time is measured for both the scenarios. Wireless sensor network is designed using Xbee RF modules (ZigBee standard) and GUI is implemented in Visual Studio.

CHAPTER 1. Introduction ….………………………………………………………..10
1.1. Smart Environment using Wireless sensor network (WSN).....................10
1.1.1 Suggested Wireless Techniques….………………...………………10
1.2. Research Motivation…………………..………………………………….15
1.2.1 Problem Definition………………………………..…….….………....15
1.2.2 Task…………………………………………………………………...16
1.3. Related Research………………….…..…………………………………..17
1.3.1 Fundamental Approaches.……………….……………………..…......17
1.3.2 Literature Review………………………………………….….……....18
1.4 Outline of Thesis……………………………………….………….……..19

CHAPTER 2. System Requirements and Analysis………………….……….……...20
2.1. Terminologies ……………………………….………………..……… …..20
2.2 Hardware Requirements……………………………..……………… …....21
2.2.1 Smoke Sensor…………………….………………………………..….…21
2.2.2 Xbee………………………………………………………..……………22
2.2.3 8051-Microcontroller ………………………………..……………….....25
2.3 Software Requirements..…………………………………….………………26
2.3.1 Top Features of Visual Studio………………….……………………….27
2.3.2 Keil µVersion 3………………………………………………………...27
2.4 Network and Communication Requirements………………………………...28
2.4.1 Tree Topology………………..…………..………………….…….…28
2.4.2 UART……………………………….………….……….…..………..29
CHAPTER 3. System Design and Implementation...……………..…………………31
3.1. Overall System Design……….………………………………..…………..31
3.1.1 Hardware Design…..……..….……………………………..…………..33
3.2. Algorithm Design and Implementation….………………………..……….....38
3.2.1 Navigation Algorithm………………………………………..…………..38
3.2.2 Graphical User Interface Implementation……………………………......46
3.3 Routing Implementation………………………………………..……………..48
3.3.1. Network & Communication Implementation………………..…………..48
CHAPTER 4. Experiments and Discussion.……………………..………………...52
4.1. Proof for Algorithm….…………………………..........................................52
4.1.1 Smoke at Single place………………………….……..……………53
4.1.2 Smoke at Multiple Places……………………………..……………56
4.2. Experimental Setup……………………………………………..…………..58
CHAPTER 5. Conclusions and Future Work..………………………....………….64
5.1 Conclusion…………………………………….………..……….………..64
5.2 Future Work………………….……………………………..…….………64
References ………………………………………………………………………..………66

[1]. Bluetooth Basics : www.bluetooth.com.

[2]. M. Cordeiro, S. Abhyankar, R. Toshival and P. Agarawal “A Novel Architecture and Coexistence Method to Provide Global Access To/From Bluetooth WPANs by IEEE 802.11 WLANs” IEEE Conference on Performance, Computing and Communications, pp. 23-30, Phoenix , USA, Apr 9-11, 2003.

[3]. Infrared Basics : http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/ir_intro/ir_intro.htm.

[4]. ZigBee Technology : www.zigbee.org.

[5]. E. Soja, “Means of Escape From Fire”, Build Magazine, Vol. 104, pp. 56-57, New Zealand, March 2008.

[6]. M. Barnes, H. Leather and D. Arvind “Emergency Evacuation Using Wireless Sensor Networks” IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, pp. 851-857, Dublin, Ireland, Oct 15-18, 2007.

[7]. A. Moffat “An Empirical Survey of Shortest Path Algorithms”, New Zealand Operational Research, vol. 11, pp 153-163, New Zealand, 1983.

[8]. S. Li, A. Zhan, X. Wu and G. Chen “Emergency Rescue Navigation with Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, pp. 361- 368, Shenzhen, China, Dec 8-11, 2009.

[9]. Y. Tseng, M. Pan and Y. Tsai “Wireless Sensor Network for Emergency Navigation”, IEEE Journal of Computer, Vol. 39, pp. 55-62, July 17, 2006.

[10]. J. Guo, C. Tsai, C. Wang and C. Lu “Zigbee Network Application in Emergency Exit Guiding”, IEEE International Computer Symposium, pp. 91-94, Tainan, Taiwan, Dec 16-18, 2010.


[11]. L. Chen, J. Cheng, Y. Tseng, L. Kuo, J. Chiang and W. Lin “A Load Balancing Emergency Guidance System Based on Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Pervasive Computing and Communication Workshop, pp. 486-488, Lugano, Switzerland, March 19-23, 2012.

[12]. M. Silva, A. Garcia and A. Conci “A Multi Agent System for Dynamic Path Planning” IEEE Workshop on Social Simulation, pp. 47-51, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Oct 24-25, 2010.

[13]. X. Wang and H. Liu “An Evacuation Algorithm for Large Building”, IEEE World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation, pp. 2497-2502, Beijing, China, July 6-8, 2012.

[14]. L. Kraus, M. Stanojevic, N. Tomasevic and V. Mijovic “A Decision Support System for Building Evacuation Based on EMIL SITE environment”, IEEE Workshop on Enabling Technologies : Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, pp. 334-336, Paris, France, June 27-29, 2011.

[15]. Graph Theory : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(mathematics)

[16]. Xbee Configuration : www.digi.com/xbee/datasheets.

[17]. Xbee data packet format : “IEEE 802.15.4 RF Modules Product Manual V1.x.cx-802.15.4 protocol”, pp. 12.