Date of Award

6-4-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Santa Clara : Santa Clara University, 2026

Departments

Computer Engineering; Computer Science and Engineering; Electrical Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Kurt Schab

Second Advisor

Krishna Ramamoorthy

Third Advisor

Michael Schimpf

Abstract

Natural disasters, infrastructure failure, and politically motivated internet shutdowns can severely disrupt communication systems, preventing affected populations from coordinating emergency response, accessing information, and contacting others. Existing communication infrastructure relies heavily on centralized networks, fixed power availability, and costly deployments, making such systems vulnerable during periods of crisis. To alleviate these problems we propose High Altitude Long Range Networking (HALoN) for Crisis Communications, a rapidly deployable decentralized wireless mesh network designed for operation in infrastructure-denied environments. HALoN utilizes low-power long range (LoRa) communication and high-altitude deployment platforms such as balloons, drones and tall structures, among others, to create temporary communication coverage over affected regions.

The system introduces three primary contributions: a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) informed routing algorithm, a priority-aware Q-learning scheduling algorithm, and a feed network for a reconfigurable antenna system. The routing algorithm dynamically selects paths based on observed link quality to improve packet delivery reliability across unstable wireless links. The scheduling algorithm adaptively prioritizes packets according to urgency, retransmission history, congestion conditions and other factors in order to improve bandwidth utilization under constrained network conditions. The reconfigurable antenna feed network enables adaptable radiation characteristics to improve coverage flexibility and communication performance across varying deployment scenarios. Both the overall architecture and its implementation are relatively lightweight, but they have the potential to significantly improve communication survivability in disaster response, humanitarian aid, rural connectivity, and censorship-resistant networking applications. In this thesis, we analyze the implementation considerations associated with decentralized deployment, adaptive routing, intelligent scheduling, and reconfigurable wireless hardware, while also designing and developing these systems within a functional prototype network.

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