A Survey on Legacy and Emerging Technologies for Public Safety Communications

Abstract

Abstract-Effective emergency and natural disaster management depend on the efficient mission-critical voice and data communication between first responders and victims. Land Mobile Radio System (LMRS) is a legacy narrowband technology used for critical voice communications with limited use for data applications. Recently Long Term Evolution (LTE) emerged as a broadband communication technology that has a potential to transform the capabilities of public safety technologies by providing broadband, ubiquitous, and mission-critical voice and data support. For example, in the United States, FirstNet is building a nationwide coast-to-coast public safety network based of LTE broadband technology. This paper presents a comparative survey of legacy and the LTE-based public safety networks, and discusses the LMRS-LTE convergence as well as mission-critical push-to-talk over LTE. A simulation study of LMRS and LTE band class 14 technologies is provided using the NS-3 open source tool. An experimental study of APCO-25 and LTE band class 14 is also conducted using software-defined radio, to enhance the understanding of the public safety systems. Finally, emerging technologies that may have strong potential for use in public safety networks are reviewed.Index Terms-APCO-25, FirstNet, heterogeneous networks, LMRS-LTE convergence, mission-critical push-to-talk, P-25, public safety communications, software-defined radio (SDR), TETRA, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), 3GPP, 5G.

Implementation of Reference Public Safety Scenarios in ns-3

“…1, the research community is identifying the main trends in wireless communications technologies that can be applied to public safety use cases and scenarios. An exhaustive discussion can be found in [14].…”

“…The design of PSC technologies has therefore been an important research topic for years, with studies that resulted in dedicated PSC standards [14], or in the possibility of re-using commercial wireless technologies and networks to assist first responders [15,18]. The suitability of a certain radio technology for PSC, however, largely depends on the context in which the communication is needed [27], and the definition of the incident scenario plays an important part in the characterization of this context.…”

Downlink Coverage Analysis of an Aerial User in Vertical Heterogeneous Networks

“…A UAV can also be equipped with a BS that can provide wireless connectivity to users (terrestrial and/or aerial users) [6]. Indeed, aerial-BSs have been proposed confidently as an agile and a quick-todeploy network entity in the case of emergency situations and/or high capacity demands (e.g., during a temporary event) [7]- [9]. In addition, aerial-BSs have been introduced as a solution that can provide ubiquitous wireless connectivity to remote communities around the world where the deployment of fixed terrestrial-BSs deemed challenging [10].…”

SoftPSN: Software‐Defined Resource Slicing for Low‐Latency Reliable Public Safety Networks

“…In the last decade, significant part of the research community focused on enhancing PSNs [5,6]. The investigation has released several solutions mainly involving massive MIMO, small cells, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), satellite networks, ad hoc networks, spectrum sharing, and cognitive radio.…”