Public Safety and ad hoc Networks: Coverage Extension and Interoperability

Abstract

The HNPS project aims at defining solutions for the integration and the interoperability between various heterogeneous communication networks. The solutions described in this document propose to enlarge the service capabilities by extending the interoperability and the coverage of the services required by the Public Safety and Security community. The general approach is divided in various parts including: extending the PMR (Professional Mobile Radiocommunications) network coverage by using existing or deployable technologies; creating bridges to extend PMR coverage thanks to IP networks. The experiments reported in this document are based on the introduction of an ad hoc network (OLSR / MOLSR protocols) in order to extend the PMR network (e.g. extension in a building): ad hoc networks are quickly deployable, do not need any infrastructure, offer a larger coverage through its multi-hop feature, so are suitable to extend a network. A gateway is also designed in order to ensure the interoperability between the PMR network and the ad hoc network: the group communication service proposed in the PMR network (including Push-To-Talk feature) is shared between both networks. Moreover, as security is a main feature of the PMR networks, solutions for the security architecture are also described in this paper. Keywords-Public Safety; ad hoc network; coverage extension; interoperability; group communication; security