Rescue Mission Enhancement through Ambulance-to- Vehicle Communications

Rescue missions are very crucial for live saving. The standard implementation of siren signal, such as siren light and sound, could be used to raise awareness of other non-emergency vehicles nearby during the rescue missions. However, there are several limitations of the siren signal. For example, it requires a line of sight to spot any approaching ambulances. However, the eyesight in driving environment is very limited. Siren sound in addition could confuse other non-emergency vehicles, because there is no information in the siren sound. The other vehicles may not be able to know where the ambulances actually are. To enhance the rescue missions, this paper proposes an implementation of vehicular communications to allow communications between ambulances and other non-emergency vehicles called Ambulance-to-Vehicle communications (A2V). A2V contributes in sharing emergency information between ambulances and other vehicles nearby in far advance. Therefore, the other vehicles can know in advance about where exactly the ambulances are, and which route or which lane these ambulances will go through. This information allows other vehicles to clear the emergency route very efficiently even before spotting and hearing the siren light and sound. Our comprehensive performance simulation results and analysis show that A2V remarkably achieves more than 40% speed improvement to ambulance, while rarely reduces speed of the other non-emergency vehicles by less than 6%.