Wireless technologies advances for emergency and rural communications
Ibrahim Habib, Franco Mazzenga · Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing · 2010
By Ibrahim Habib and Franco Mazzenga, Guest Editors Wireless communications for public safety, emergency communications, and delivery of wideband services to rural communities are topics of crucial importance to the welfare of the society. Broadband wireless digital subscriber loop (WDSL) technologies offer complementary and possibly low cost solutions to providing broadband connectivity services even to low densely populated areas that otherwise would be outside the loop. At the same time the availability of broadband wireless technologies can be useful for effective information dissemination in times of natural and man-made disasters thus providing a fundamental tool helping public safety agencies in providing quick response and support to communities needing urgent assistance and relief. The topic has been largely investigated (e.g. see references 1-6 and references therein) during the last two decades. The quality of communications services offered by the actual public safety systems is in general well behind of that offered by commercial systems. At the same time, due to costs of radio coverage and trunking, the quality of services provided by existing commercial mobile systems in low densely populated areas, e.g. rural areas, is well below that offered by operators in urban and sub-urban areas. Current solutions for rural areas for example provide basic telephone services and only are rarely suitable for effective data access. Some rural areas that are close to natural woods with dry climates are prone to fires that could be disastrous. Reliable emergency communications systems should be adequately available with access to the residents in order for emergency authorities to be able to respond to such natural disasters, as quickly as possible, if they occur. The society obvious need for new and advanced communications services for supporting public safety operations has led to the evolution of current systems towards a new generation of professional mobile radio (PMR) and standard communication systems. Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) technology has gained wide acceptance (especially in Europe) and is considered one of the mature technologies for PMR and even for PAMR (Public Access Mobile Radio) markets. TETRA has been conceived in accordance to the requirements issued by public safety agencies such as ambulance services, law enforcement, civil emergency management/disaster recovery, fire services, coast guard services, search, and rescue services, government administrations and so forth. In recent years it has been observed that integration between mobile broadband technologies and TETRA can be helpful for the achievement of the advanced services envisioned for the next generation of Public Safety and Disaster Recovery (PSDR) communication systems. In fact, data rates required for advanced emergency services provisioning plus the demand for enhanced mobility improved ad hoc functionality, and international interoperability reach far beyond the scope of the current PSDR narrowband telecommunication systems and call for mobile broadband enhancements. A significant challenge faced by professionals conducting public protection and disaster relief operations is the problem of incompatible communications systems. The goal of the MESA project established between the ETSI and the TIA (www.projectmesa.org) 7 was to develop advanced mobile broadband technical specifications that could solve interoperability issues among different communication technologies and to define enhanced functionalities of the public safety communication (PSC) systems. One task of this special issue is to address the integration of current PMR systems with 3G and 4G technologies for providing enhanced communication services including real time access to (local) sensor networks (if any) as well as to databases for retrieving and distributing audio, video, and geographical information. This could be important during an emergency operation where a large amount of contextual information is generated and need to be distributed wirelessly to personnel from different emergency agencies 8, 9. In parallel, on the commercial side for civilian applications, access to broadband communication services has become an established, global commodity required by a large percentage of the population. It is widely recognized in developed countries that the setting up broadband wireless access networks is helpful to solve the “digital divide” gap. Efforts to bringing mass-market broadband services even to low densely populated areas such as the rural ones follow the initiative of the European Commission called Bridging the broadband gap which is intended to carry high-speed broadband internet to all Europeans and in particular to EU's less-developed areas. WDSL systems, even supporting mobile and nomadic users, that are based on the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WIMAX) and other technologies such as the Rural WCDMA (which is an effective solution to rapidly extend UMTS to rural areas) can play a significant role in the broadband wireless access market. Furthermore it should be observed that rural broadband access is not limited to Europe but it represents a common global challenge. The R-WCDMA and WiMAX technologies seem to be promising solutions for the provisioning of broadband services to rural areas. They can easily incorporate all the technical solutions to improve the link budgets and, very importantly, allow the re-use of already existing wireless terminals (at least for R-WCDMA). In general, it is well known that networks for rural coverage could be constructed from the integration of more than one communication technologies such as satellite, terrestrial and high altitude platforms (HAPs) (if any). In this case, techniques for the intelligent use of the available radio technologies could help reducing deployment costs and improving spectrum usage. Alternatives for broadband access could be based on structured terrestrial networks adopting (possibly cheap) techniques for enlarging the cell coverage area of a single base station deployed for offering point-to-multipoint (PMP) services. These solutions include relay stations and/or distributed (sub)-networks organized in a mesh or ad-hoc that are connected to the base station which, in turn, provides access to the core network. This special issue includes a number of interesting papers covering different aspects of emergency and rural communications systems. Some of the topics discussed in this special issue include: hybrid network architectures comprising satellite and HAPS for covering rural areas as well as for supporting emergency situations; integration of heterogeneous communication networks; protocols for ad-hoc, mesh, and VANET networks. The problems of information dissemination during emergency and localization are also analyzed. Finally, we would like to thank the authors who presented their work, the reviewers for their meticulous reviews, and the editor-in-chief and the editorial staff of the Journal for their excellent efforts and support producing this special issue. Ibrahim Habib received the Ph.D. degree from the City University of New York, the M.Sc. degree from Polytechnic University of New York, USA, and the B.Sc. degree from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt all in Electrical Engineering. In 1991 he joined the Faculty of the City University of New York where is now a Full Professor. His research interests span different areas of traffic engineering in IP, wireless, and optical networking. He has published more than 100 papers and reports in those areas. From 1998 till 2000 he was with AT&T Labs, and from 2000 till 2001 with Telcordia Technologies, Applied Research Department working on the architecture design of IP over optical networks, optical control plane and Operations Support Systems (OSS). He was a Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), the IEEE Communications Magazine and was an Editor of the same Magazine. He was chair of many technical sessions, symposia and conferences. He is listed in many Marquis's who is who in the World and who is who in America editions. Franco Mazzenga received the Dr. Ing. degree in electronics engineering cum laude from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy in 1993. From 1993 to 1994 he was with Fondazione Ugo Bordoni making research on the propagation at millimeter waves. In 1997 he obtained the Ph.D. degree in telecommunications from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. From 1998 to 2000 he was a researcher in Consorzio di Ricerca in Telecomunicazioni (CoRiTel). From 2000 to 2006 he was a researcher in the Electronic Engineering Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Currently he is an associate professor of communications in the same department. Since 2001 he is the technical director of the Consorzio Università Industria Laboratori di Radiocomunicazioni (Radiolabs - http://www.radiolabs.it). He is the author and co-author of more than 90 scientific papers that have been presented on congresses or published on national and international journals. He is co-author of a book on Radar systems (in Italian) and co-author of four patents on communication technologies and applications. His research interests are on wireless access systems and networks and related technologies, GNSS systems and complex network theory applied to communication systems.