Authors: Romain Favraud, Apostolos Apostolaras, Navid Nikaein and Thanasis Korakis

Journal: IEEE Communications Magazine, Critical Communications and Public Safety Networks Series, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 14-20, March 2016

Abstract: Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) has been selected by US federal and EU authorities to be the technology for public-safety (PS) networks that would allow first responders to seamlessly communicate between agencies and across geographies in tactical and emergency scenarios. From Release 11, the Third-Generation-Partnership-Project (3GPP) has been underway to develop and specify dedicated, nationwide public safety broadband networks that will be scalable, robust and resilient and can address the specific communication needs of emergency services. In this realm, the requirements and scenarios for isolated Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E- TRAN) with no or limited backhaul access to the core network are still in progress. In this article, we survey possible public safety use-cases with the induced network topologies, current status of the 3GPP standards and highlight future challenges. We further elaborate on the need to support mobile backhauling in movingcell scenarios and describe two LTE-based solutions to enable dynamic meshing among the base stations.

Download paper: toward_moving_public_safety_networks.pdf