TRX Systems
  • Company
    • About TRX
    • Newsroom
  • Products
    • NEON® PT-MIL
    • TRX DAPS
    • NEON® PT-PRO
    • NEON® Signal Mapper
  • Store
  • Support
    • Documentation
    • Support

Welcome to the TRX Systems Newsroom

Subscribe To Our Blog

TRX Develops Proximity System to Increase Firefighter Safety

4/21/2016

 
​Fire Departments in rural/small suburban areas identified a gap for the development of a hardware and software system that helps firefighting Incident Commanders and Team Leaders to maintain team integrity within the fire ground.
Picture
​Supported by the Department of Homeland Security First Responder group, we developed an affordable high accuracy time of flight ranging solution in an effort to fill this operational gap. The aim of the system is to provide team leads and search parties with very accurate ranging information to their team. The access to the ranging information will help to reduce the time to find a firefighter in distress in low visibility conditions. This low cost tool can help rural or small fire departments keep track of their firefighters inside burning buildings. The images below show the prototype Android App and the small proximity device developed by the TRX team.

The ranging solution is based on the latest ultra-wideband time of flight ranging sensors. Ultra-wideband sensors use a frequency bandwidth of 500Mz or more. The wide bandwidth significantly reduces multipath errors - that is, errors in the ranging measurements caused by signals bouncing off walls and other objects in the cluttered indoor environments. The solution provides sub-meter ranging accuracy over distances up to approximately 50 meters. The operational range of the solution is currently limited by FCC requirements on the power of signal emission for ultra-wideband signal sources. The 50 meter range is more than adequate for maintaining the integrity of teams operating together.

Another benefit of the ultra-wideband system is that the sub-meter level ranging accuracy is able to be maintained even when passing through standard office walls. While the sensors are a huge improvement over signal strength based ranging in terms of their accuracy, they do not defeat the laws of physics so the ranging measurements will still be blocked by some building materials such as metals.

In addition to the ranging, the TRX Systems proximity device includes other sensors that enable us to provide relative elevation information; allowing a search team to know that a firefighter is 25 feet away and 10 feet below. This information would allow a RIT team, for example, to measure range and relative elevation from outside of a building.

In February the system was tested with Herman VFC Fire Chief Rob McLafferty (one of the subject matter experts advising DHS and TRX Systems on this development program) and several firefighters from the Herman VFC . The test was designed to give the firefighters a feel for how the system would work in the best conditions (line of sight) and also how the system would work during team operations and searches in areas of different construction.
​
The Proximity Sensor will ultimately be integrated with self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA). During this program we worked with MSA to develop an ICD sharing the proximity information for display on their SCBA interface. MSA will be demonstrating the ranging capability integrated directly into their G1 SCBA at FDIC (Booth 2111). We will be delivering 100 proximity units to the Department of Homeland Security for further testing with rural and small suburban departments. For more information on the Firefighter Accountability and Proximity System, read the article by the Department of Homeland Secur
ity. 

Comments are closed.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015

    Categories

    All
    Awards
    Events
    Partnerships
    Product News

    RSS Feed

Picture

Company

About TRX
Newsroom

​TRX DAPS
​NEON PT-MIL

Support

Launch NEON
Documentation
Terms of Use
​Privacy Notice

Contact TRX Systems

Contact TRX
©2023 TRX Systems, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
  • Company
    • About TRX
    • Newsroom
  • Products
    • NEON® PT-MIL
    • TRX DAPS
    • NEON® PT-PRO
    • NEON® Signal Mapper
  • Store
  • Support
    • Documentation
    • Support