Emergency 5G Communication on‐the‐Move: Concept and field trial of a mobile satellite backhaul for public protection and disaster relief

AbstractSummaryA secure and flexible communication infrastructure for the use of broadband and IP‐based services is becoming more and more important in the context of Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). Government agencies and emergency responders need to be able to react quickly to emergencies across the globe. In particular, satellite‐based 5G mobile networks can support government agencies during their critical tasks. To support the standardization committees and the industry, it is required to evaluate new architectures for such networks by utilizing testbeds and field trials. In this article, we propose and investigate architectures for mobile PPDR networks with satellite backhaul to ensure Communication on‐the‐Move. The flexibility within the architectures comes with the distribution of the core network nodes at the edge of the network applying the Core‐Edge Split concept. The presented results show that already existing interfaces of the Evolved Packet Core 3GPP standard allow satellite‐based 5G networks tailored to the needs of government authorities.