Paradigm shift in public warning systems: A two-tier approach towards broadcasting

Abstract

With the recent outbreak of COVID-19 and other pandemics, improving the public safety communication is essential for efficient communication in the 5G and beyond wireless communication networks. The key requirements shall be lower delays, improved coordination and efficient resource utilization, to achieve higher efficiency in the network performance in an emergency/pandemic situation. Since deployment costs and scarce resource availability are major constraints in the network functioning, looking forward to a new network solution, a heterogenous network (HetNet) architecture has been proposed in this paper, for an efficient broadcast network set up during emergency situations. This paper proposes a two-tier heterogenous network (HetNet) architecture, with the macro base station (MBS) tier being Tier 1 and the small cell tier (SCT) being Tier 2. Here the SCT is mostly involved in setting up of a public warning communication system. The HetNets also intend to promote device-to-device (D2D) communication links, in case of absence of connectivity to the user via the MBT or the SCT. Use of small cells and D2D links shall improve the overall system performance. Certain research challenges however persist, and are stated in the paper. © 2020 IEEE.