Public safety networks: Enabling mobility for critical communications

Long-term evolution (LTE) is becoming the technology reference for 4G cellular networks, as it is increasingly adopted by all major operators all over the world. Currently, LTE is rising to the challenge of addressing several issues (e.g. cellular networks’ capacity crunch, ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, massive numbers of connections, super-fast mobility, diverse-spectrum access) that speed up the pace toward 5G. Moreover, LTE is expected to be an important part of the 5G solution for future networks and also plays an essential role in advancing public safety (PS) communications. In the United States, LTE has been chosen as the next appropriate communication technology to support PS, and it is likely to be the same in the European Union. Moreover, several vendors (e.g. Ericsson, Nokia-Alcatel, Huawei, Cisco) are now starting to propose LTE-based PS solutions and some of them have been put to real experimentation in the field.