Overview of LTE Isolated E-UTRAN Operation for Public Safety

In response to the growing demand in the public safety community for broadband communication systems, LTE is currently being adopted as the base technology for next generation public safety networks. In parallel, notable efforts are being made by the 3GPP to enhance the LTE standard in order to offer public safety oriented services. In the recent Release 13, the Isolated E-UTRAN Operation for Public Safety (IOPS) concept was introduced. IOPS aims at maintaining a level of communication between public safety users, offering them local mission-critical services even when the backhaul connectivity to the core network is not fully functional. Isolated operation is usually needed in mission-critical situations, when the infrastructure is damaged or completely destroyed, and in out of coverage areas. In this article, we present a detailed technical overview of the IOPS specifications, and then identify several research prospects and development perspectives opened up by IOPS, being a relatively novel concept in the mobile networks field.