Using UWB Radios as Sensors for Disaster Recovery

This paper considers the sub-problem of estimating the interior structure of a collapsed building by using embedded UWB radios as sensors. We created an extensive database of UWB propagation data through various building materials. Then, using this data and a novel algorithm, we demonstrate that we can indeed determine material type, thickness and cavity dimensions using UWB radios. This paper presents the algorithm and the evaluation results. As we show, for most common building materials such as concrete and reinforced concrete, the presented algorithm has a very small estimation error.