An architectural proposal for future wireless emergency response networks with broadband services

Abstract

Local and federal governments have recognized the importance of mobile emergency response networks that can rapidly establish reliable communication links to support multimedia broadband applications. In this paper, we describe a novel proposal for a scalable and flexible architecture to support the needs of such future wireless emergency response networks. We first describe a series of requirements and performance expectations that future wireless network architectures must satisfy. These requirements then motivate our investigations of several key technical areas. In particular, we propose a novel hybrid network architecture that includes a fixed and permanently deployed part as well as a mobile/portable infrastructure that is deployed as the capacity and connectivity needs arise. This very flexible architecture dynamically manages the integration of emergency response applications with municipal and civic services to provide the maximum achievable performance for the latter, while at the same time ensuring the priority and quality of service (QoS) requirements of the former. Finally, we provide algorithms for dynamically managing both types of applications in a joint and integrated network through flexible frequency partitioning as well as through dynamic renegotiation of the QoS performance targets and admission control.