Nowadays, Public Safety Networking (PSN) design is paramount for law enforcement, fire fighting, emergency medical and health services, border security, search and rescue missions, and mission-critical scenarios. At the moment, Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) agencies around the world rely on dedicated Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) technologies, however, these technologies were conceived in the 1990s. While PMR technologies offer a rich voice-centric applications, they are limited and lag far behind the advancements that are currently made in or planned for the commercial wireless technologies. Moreover, the paradigm of PPDR communications is based on dedicated networks and spectrum, which is no longer believed to provide broadband data communications for PPDR.
Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology has been designed to provide broadband, high data rates, and IP connectivity solutions. Therefore, LTE is a suitable technology for deploying a rich number of mobile broadband applications for PPDR, including HD video delivery. Moreover, worldwide deployment of LTE networks, multi-vendor support of LTE user equipments, global coverage and interoperability, and the possibility of sharing spectrum bands and backbone infrastructure with the commercial LTE networks are incentives to deploy LTE networks for public safety. In this context, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is currently developing a number of LTE technology standards to improve its features and capabilities, and to enhance the suitability for PPDR.