from the ABC news today
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/12/2950755.htm
Australian mobile invention could be desert lifeline
By Jason Om in Arkaroola
Australian researchers have developed software that allows mobile phones to communicate with each other where there is no reception.
It is a new mobile phone system that promises to work anywhere and potentially help save lives in a disaster.
Researchers have gone to extraordinary lengths to
test it out in a remote desert wilderness in South Australia.
In a landscape of deep valleys and rugged red ochre mountains, the tests have been a success.
They were carried out at
Sillers Lookout, a lonely
cliff that juts out like a long finger at Arkaroola in the
Flinders Ranges.
The area is dead quiet apart from a few flies and some unexpected chatter.
Researchers from Flinders University have gone to the remote spot to prove their technology works.
They have been carrying out tests in a range of situations where there is no mobile phone reception.
Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen, who is leading the project, has made software that allows ordinary mobiles to communicate without phone towers or satellites.
"Here at Arkaroola the nearest mobile phone coverage is probably 100 to 130 kilometres away," he said.
"We are in chasms and gorges where even satellite phone would actually have a lot of trouble because you can't see enough of the sky to acquire the satellite."
Dr Gardner-Stephen says his device actually incorporates a compact version of a mobile phone tower into the phone itself.
"So using the WiFi interface that is in many phones today that you would normally use for internet or that kind of thing, we are actually carrying voice over that, but in a way that doesn't need to go back to a central repository anywhere," he said.
The signal between phones is limited to a few hundred metres but by adding more devices and small transmitters the range can be expanded to cover a much bigger area.
Dr Gardner-Stephen says the system could provide an instant mobile phone network in a disaster.
"With Haiti what was actually observed was that their mobile phone network and their landline phone network was essentially knocked out for the first 48 hours after the earthquake," he said.
"It was really about a week before it was back to the point where people could fairly readily make calls.
"What research has actually shown is that the vast majority of the response to a disaster is actually from the local people there, so if we can provide them with ease of communications as soon as possible after the earthquake, not 48 hours, not 72 hours but potentially minutes after a disaster, then we can help them to start rescuing people from rubble and generally rebuilding, maintaining law and order."
The researchers' next step is to increase range, improve sound quality and develop a way of air dropping the system into a disaster zone.