Public safety networks evolution toward broadband: sharing infrastructures and spectrum with commercial systems

Nowadays, efficient communication technologies are of paramount importance to provide effective and reliable emergency management systems. New wireless communications engineering approaches and value-added services could lead to great benefits, improving situational awareness and enhancing life-saving capabilities. For these reasons, governments and organizations involved in public safety and security (PSS) are devoting great interest in the transition from existing narrowband wireless systems toward broadband. For this purpose, a viable solution is to adapt the new LTE-A technology in order to provide IP-based broadband services with security and reliability characteristics typical of PSS networks. However, the migration of these systems to LTE-A is currently a critical issue. Costs, timing, and spectrum availability for the deployment of a PSS-dedicated network are demanding. In addition, providing mission-critical services on an LTE-based PSS system needs a proper network architecture solution in order to achieve and maintain required performance and reliability levels. To fully accomplish this task, research efforts can result in significant improvements and adjustments of future releases of the LTE-A standard. This article focuses on critical issues that impact PSS communications evolution toward new technologies and describes the related possible steps, starting from the exploitation of the already deployed LTE-A commercial networks up to a fully PSS-dedicated network infrastructure. Finally, advanced solutions are described and critically discussed.