Public safety network design for broadband wireless access

Wireless communications technologies play an essential role to support the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) operational needs. The current Private/Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) technologies used for PPDR communications offer a rich set of voice-centric services but have very limited data transmission capabilities, which are unable to handle the increasing PPDR community demand for a wider range of data-centric services. Though some efforts have been devoted to upgrade PMR technologies with better data transfer capabilities, the progression towards an enhanced mobile broadband PMR standardized solution still lags behind the achievements made in the commercial wireless industry, which recently culminated in Long- Term Evolution (LTE) technology. Because of this contrasting progress, the adoption of commercial mainstream LTE technology to satisfy the PPDR community's data communication needs is gaining momentum and offers significant opportunities to create and exploit the synergies between the commercial and PPDR domains, which have remained almost entirely separate to date. In this context, this paper first discusses the suitability of LTE and related technologies for mobile broadband PPDR service provisioning. Next, it presents the argument that the most plausible future scenarios to deliver the increasingly data-intensive applications demanded by the PPDR agencies are expected to rely on the use of both dedicated and commercial LTE-based mobile networks. From this basis, the paper proposes a system architecture solution for PPDR service provisioning that enables PPDR service access through dedicated and commercial networks in a secure and interoperable manner and ensures proper allocation of the networks' capacity to PPDR applications through the dynamic management of prioritization policies. In addition, the spectrumrelated issues that are central to the proposed PPDR service provisioning solution are addressed, and a solution based on the joint e- ploitation of dedicated and shared spectra is proposed.

Transitioning a Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) network to a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network in public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) systems is a path to providing future services requiring high radio interface throughput and allowing broadband PPDR (BB-PPDR) radio communications. Users of TETRA networks are currently considering how to deploy a BB-PPDR network in the coming years. This study offers several radio planning considerations in TETRA to LTE migration for such networks. The conclusions are obtained from a case study in which both measurements and radioelectric coverage simulations were carried out for the real scenario of the Murcia Region, Spain, for both TETRA and LTE systems. The proposed considerations can help PPDR agencies efficiently estimate the cost of converting a TETRA network to an LTE network. Uniquely in this study, the total area is divided into geographical areas of interest that are defined as administrative divisions (region, municipal areas, etc.). The analysis was carried out using a radio planning tool based on a geographic information system and the measurements have been used to tune the propagation models. According to the real scenario considered, the number of sites needed in the LTE network—for a specific quality of service (90% for the whole region and 85% for municipal areas)—is a factor of 2.4 higher than for TETRA network.

A nationwide interoperable public safety broadband network is being planned by the United States government. The network will be based on long term evolution (LTE) standards and use recently designated spectrum in the 700 MHz band. The public safety network has different objectives and traffic patterns than commercial wireless networks. In particular, the public safety network puts more emphasis on coverage, reliability and latency in the worst case scenario. Moreover, the routine public safety traffic is relatively light, whereas when a major incident occurs, the traffic demand at the incident scene can be significantly heavier than that in a commercial network. Hence it is prohibitively costly to build the public safety network using conventional cellular network architecture consisting of an infrastructure of stationary base transceiver stations. A novel architecture is proposed in this paper for the public safety broadband network. The architecture deploys stationary base stations sparsely to serve light routine traffic and dispatches mobile base stations to incident scenes along with public safety personnel to support heavy traffic. The analysis shows that the proposed architecture can potentially offer more than 75% reduction in terms of the total number of base stations needed.

The Republic of Korea has played a leading role in the development of next-generation long-term evolution (LTE) public safety networks. The LTE-based public safety (PS-LTE) network, the LTE-based high-speed railway (LTE-R) network, and the LTE-based maritime (LTE-M) network use the same 700 MHz frequency band. That results in severe co-channel interference (CCI), so there is a dire need for practical research into resolving the CCI issue. Moreover, unplanned deployment of the mobile personal cell (mPC) generates serious user-association issues owing to its movement, which leads to severe co-channel interference in coexisting PS-LTE and LTE-R networks. Indeed, it is important to satisfy users’ quality of service (QoS) requirements during resource allocation in specific public safety situations. Therefore, we address the CCI issues through wise deployment of the mPC for user association and load balancing in overlapping PS-LTE and LTE-R networks. In this paper, we propose a QoS mPC deployment (QoS_mPCD) scheme for priority-based load balancing and interference reduction in coexisting PS-LTE and LTE-R networks. The proposed scheme efficiently manages the user-association and load-balancing problems, and allocates the best resources to high-priority users based on defined service priority levels. Moreover, we employ an enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) scheme that further reduces the interference with the users offloaded onto an mPC. System-level simulations are performed to evaluate the proposed QoS_mPCD scheme by considering important performance matrices such as user equipment (UE) throughput, UE received interference, and UE outage probabilities.

Chapter 18 - Evolution of TETRA through the integration with a number of communication platforms to support public protection and disaster relief (PPDR)

Our modern densely populated cities have created an Achilles heel for public safety services where natural or man-made disasters often result in high casualties. The 2005 London bombings have exposed the inadequacy of current First Responder (FR) communication systems for modern response operations. Additionally, FR organisations presently pay a tariff each time Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) communication technologies are used, rendering current PPDR communication expensive as compared to emerging license-exempt IP-based technologies. Decentralised ubiquitous networking proposes an alternative way of providing innovative secure wireless systems for IP-based, infrastructure independent PPDR communications. The ad-hoc setup capabilities of ubiquitous systems will reduce the cost for emergency response whilst allowing more flexible ways of communicating. Key characteristics of such systems are their ease of deployment and the interoperability across FR teams for national as well as cross border operations. In this paper we discuss how decentralised ubiquitous networking can assist emergency communications.

One of new domains where the D2D communication can be applied is the Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) and National Security and Public Safety (NSPS) services. The key requirement for employing the PPDR and NSPS services is to provide the access to the communication services even if cellular network is highly overloaded or become fully dysfunctional due to some public disaster or emergency situations. In such case, the most important task is to share emergency information between citizens even when most of them do not have infrastructural connectivity. Since D2D is by default a single-hop communication, it is crucial to find the mechanism how to transmit any data via randomly assembled network even for longer distances. Therefore, this paper focuses on the utilization of MANET routing protocols for D2D communication in case that the connection to the cellular network is down. The selected routing protocols used in MANET are described and their suitability is verified in the simulation environment Network Simulator 3 (NS-3).

National disasters can threaten national security and require several organizations to integrate the functionalities to correspond to the event. Many countries are constructing a nationwide mobile communication network infrastructure to share information and promptly communicate with corresponding organizations. Public Safety Long-Term Evolution (PS-LTE) is a communication mechanism adopted in many countries to achieve such a purpose. Organizations can increase the efficiency of public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) operations by securely connecting the services run on their legacy networks to the PS-LTE infrastructure. This environment allows the organizations to continue facilitating the information and system functionalities provided by the legacy network. The vulnerabilities in the environment, which differ from commercial LTE, need to be resolved to connect the network securely. In this study, we propose a security model design framework to derive the system architecture and the security requirements targeting the restricted environment applied by certain technologies for a particular purpose. After analyzing the PPDR operation environment’s characteristics under the PS-LTE infrastructure, we applied the framework to derive the security model for organizations using PPDR services operated in their legacy networks through this infrastructure. Although the proposed security model design framework is applied to the specific circumstance in this research, it can be generally adopted for the application environment.

We present a hands-free kinetic control method for flying of micro air vehicles (MAVs) or small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR). The system combines a 3D depth-sensing camera with a low-cost drone. The solution is based on Delicode Ltd’s NI mateTM software toolkit. In a study with 10 participants, the kinetic control method was tested and compared with the drone’s normal control mode. The speed to fly a certain path inside a building, and the path accuracy at checkpoints were compared between these two modes. The learning rate with the kinetic control method was found to be better than by normal control. After five attempts, an overall flying speed and path accuracy were still weaker by kinetic control method than by conventional hands-on method. However, hands-free control gives several significant benefits for PPDR applications.

This paper presents a study on development and evolution of Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) com- munication networks in the perspective of the next 15-20 years. A need for modern, reliable mobile communications systems for PPDR offering a wide range of services, yet harmonized, is commonly recognized at both country and European level. There are therefore a number of activities in this area currently being undertaken. In this paper we discuss several technical aspects of migration of PPDR networks towards broadband systems and describe the most likely upgrade scenario based on an evaluation of migration costs.

The coexistence of broadband systems with currently deployed Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) communication systems like Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) has gained much deserved attention. In the recent literature, it has been suggested that LTE-like FBMC-OQAM system working on linear devices can coexist in PMR band, while conventional OFDM-based LTE system fails. When we take into account, the RF impairments in radio communication systems; it is inevitable to consider the non-linear nature of High Power Amplifiers (HPAs), as they add severe hindrance in this aspect. In this paper, we address this issue and show that LTE-like FBMC-OQAM system working on non-linear devices can still co-exist with PMR/PPDR systems, when suitable peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is applied.

Mission-critical services (MCX) comprise a standardized suite of capabilities including Mission-Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT), MCVideo, and MCData, designed to meet stringent requirements for availability, reliability, latency, security, and Quality of Service (QoS). These services are essential for public safety, emergency response, and other critical infrastructure domains, where communication performance directly affects operational effectiveness. Integration into 4G and 5G mobile networks, supported by targeted standardization efforts, has extended broadband capabilities to mission-critical environments. 5G networks provide the technical foundations for MCX through ultra-low latency (below 1 ms), high availability (99.999%), broadband throughput over 100 Mbps per user, deterministic QoS via network slicing, massive device connectivity (over one million devices per square kilometer), and seamless Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) integration. Technical enablers such as Proximity Services (ProSe), network slicing, and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) are fundamental to delivering these capabilities. This paper reviews MCX architectures, service frameworks, and protocols, relating MCPTT, MCData, and MCVideo to the key performance requirements defined in ITU-T M.2377-2. It also examines the frozen features of 3GPP Release 19, including enhancements to MC services, NTN integration, Reduced Capability device support, sub-meter positioning, extended network slicing for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR), and strengthened security mechanisms. Finally, the study addresses challenges such as standard maturity, interoperability, and deterministic QoS, identifying research priorities toward 6G readiness. By consolidating advances from standards bodies, research initiatives, and deployments, this work serves as a technical reference for scalable, secure, and standards-compliant MCX solutions in current and future networks.

The paper researches the existing European standards for Public Safety and Emergency (PSE) services (also called Public Protection Disaster Relief “PPDR”) 1 , and identifies based on user studies in Denmark conflicts between the current deployments of the standards and the user requirements. The aim is further to identify the potentials of new technologies for PSE. The paper deals with policy and technology frameworks, regulatory issues and in particular the spectrum issues in the current PPDR deployments in the EU countries. The paper draws on the results and concepts developed in two EU-projects. 2 Experience from research projects are used to discuss new possible solutions to the problems. We look at the development in other major 1 PPDR is a broader definition. In Europe, the radio communications networks used by public safety and emergency services will normally be used to provide Public Protection (“PP”). As the trend in some parts of Europe is to allow non-public safety organisations that could be involved in major emergencies and disasters (for example transportation, utilities, military, etc.) to operate on the same networks as used by public safety organisations, it is logical that provision could be made on these networks (issue of terminals) to other agencies providing Disaster Relief (“DR”).

In this article we offer visual depictions and analysis of contextual factors relative to the presence of public safety networks (PSNs) in the United States (US). A PSN combines shared technological infrastructures for supporting information sharing, computing interoperability and interagency interactions involving policing, criminal justice, and emergency response. The broad research objective is to explain the formation of PSNs based upon factors derived from rational choice and institutional theories. To do so we develop maps to represent our data analysis. This analysis suggests that our approach is promising for generating insights about PSNs and, by extension, about other types of inter-organizational collaborations focusing on using information and communication technologies to enable information-sharing.

3G long-term evolution (LTE) can bring substantial technological and economical benefits to operators deploying mobile networks beyond 3G. With significant improvements in the radio interface, enabling a lower data access cost per megabyte as well as several potentially important new services, 3G LTE could have a decisive advantage over alternative wireless technologies that currently compete with 3GPP technologies. 3G LTE provides a cost-efficient way to deliver the most popular services to large numbers of people, with a technology that is directly based on existing 2G and 3G systems. This paper analyzes the economics of 3G LTE for a system architecture evolution (SAE) network. This starts with examining the drivers for broadcasting and mobility convergence, which is followed by a description of the business case for the 3G LTE technology and its SAE network structure. Concluding the paper is a techno-economic analysis for a 3G LTE operator with its own 3G network. The analysis is carried out by the construction of a techno-economic simulation model, which looks at a large Western European type country from 2010 to 2019. Two different cases are taken into account: a fixed use case, which is similar to that of wireless DSL, and a mobile use case, which is similar to that of 3G cellular data. The respective addressable markets arc assumed to be one million and ten million users. For these two cases, the total costs of building and operating the SAE network arc approximately 120 million and 1.9 billion euros. For the lived case, an ARPU of 15 euros per month is sufficient for breakeven; for the mobile case, an ARPU of 10 euros.