Roman Khayat has always loved solving problems and learning about electronics. When he was 14, the Orlando native built his first computer and discovered that circuit boards were just an advanced form of Legos. After serving as an electronics technician in the Coast Guard for five years, he discovered the electrical and computer science program in The Citadel Evening Undergraduate College.
“I enjoy the fact that the professors really care about you learning and knowing and walking away with good information that you’re going to be able to use,” said Khayat. “Some schools focus a lot on theory, or the teachers are more focused on their own research than the actual classes, so The Citadel itself as a teaching college is truly making sure the students learn what they need to know.”
This spring, Khayat and three other members of his program put the finishing touches on a senior capstone design project that could revolutionize how first responders are able to communicate and how emergency site data is transferred to a command center.
Their project, a network establishment emergency drone system, is a self-expanding, self-healing Wi- Fi network that uses drones as network bridges. At a central information center, emergency personnel will monitor network coverage by analyzing data collected through a GPS-equipped node with network detection software. A user interface receives GPS coordinates of an area that the network system temporarily establishes and maintains. Using data collected from the scout, a heat map of the network strength will be created, and another network bridge will be dispatched as necessary to reinforce any weak points.
Khayat, who spearheaded the group, was quick to point out how important each person’s role was
to the project’s success. “I’ve learned quite a bit from Andrew about Python programming and scripting and information about Linux. And what I learned from Randall and Jacob really helped me understand how mesh networks operated,” said Khayat. “It was really interesting to figure out how it functions, what the pros and cons were, why we were doing mesh networking specifically, and how it applied to our needs for EMS.”