Performance Test of VHF-HF-based Emergency Data Communication System between the Sardjito Hospital and District Hospital in the Isolated and Disaster-prone Areas

Abstract

The topography of Gunungkidul area in the Province of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, consisting of hills and limestone mountains. It becomes the potential factor of landslide occurrences. Especially in the rainy season, the soils in the hills become softer and it increases the possibility to cause a landslide. This condition has became the concern of many people, especially the residents who live in the landslide-prone area. This topography is also one of the factors for health centre in a certain area becomes isolated due to the inability of telecommunication signal services from the provider to reach that area, which is called a blank area. That situation makes an inability to contact the nearest district hospital to ask for support in an emergency case. This research focuses on the performance test of the emergency data communication system by using several types of data. The system uses Very High Frequency (VHF) 144 MHz and High Frequency (HF) 7.08 MHz as the data carrier and a software to interpret the text and image to be modulated onto the data carrier. That system is called a virtual hospital, means that even though the health center is located in a blank area, but specialists from the Sardjito Hospital can still deliver advices to support the health center in maintaining the medical service quality by using the VHF-HF-based emergency data communication system. Based on the results of the system's performance test between the Wonosari Gunungkidul District Hospital and the Sardjito Hospital with the distance of 40 km, the receiving quality of the data transmission for text and image are 95% and 55.33%, respectively.