Performance Evaluation of Proximity Services and Wi-Fi for Public Safety Mission Critical Voice Application

Abstract

Proximity Services (ProSe) and Wi-Fi are two promising technologies that may provide support for Mission Critical Voice (MCV) applications in remote and rural areas by enabling Device-to-Device (D2D) communication. In this paper, several performance metrics of ProSe and Wi-Fi are evaluated and compared side-by-side under various configurations. The ns-3 simulation results show that ProSe outperforms Wi-Fi in terms of coverage range and access time with a medium traffic load, while Wi-Fi has a shorter access time under a light traffic load. In addition, with various user densities, ProSe offers better coverage range and access time a majority of the time. The evaluation in this paper provides insights to first responders on what to expect with either technology and how to improve the performance by adjusting different system parameters.