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Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
Article in Proceedings of the IEEE · November 2011
DOI: 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2161737 · Source: DLR
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INVITED
PAPER
Aerospace Communications for
Emergency Applications
Recent advancements and trends in the use of aerospace communications for
emergency rescue applications are discussed, as are integration of aerospace facilities
with terrestrial backbones and networks.
By Matteo Berioli, Member IEEE , Antonella Molinaro, Member IEEE ,
Simone Morosi, Member IEEE , and Sandro Scalise, Senior Member IEEE
ABSTRACT | In this paper, the current trends and the most
recent advancements in the utilization of aerospace communications for emergency rescue applications will be discussed,
with a special focus on the integration of the aerospace segment with terrestrial backbones and ad hoc terrestrial networks for both data connections and assisted localization
(information about position is essential in emergency relief).
KEYWORDS | Assisted localization; cooperative communications; emergency services; relay networks; satellite backhauling; satellite communications
I. INTRODUCTION
Emergency applications have seen in the last few years
increased attention from the scientific community. Recent
natural disasters occurred in the World, e.g., Tsunami in
Indonesia (2004) and in Japan (2011), Katrina hurricane in
New Orleans (2005), earthquakes in Italy (2009), Haiti
(2010), and Chile (2010), evidenced the urgent necessity
to immediately restore a minimal level of connectivity, in
order to provide first response to emergency requests,
coordinate rescue teams, and allow survivors to communicate with the external world. Experience in the field
demonstrated that this task is very difficult to achieve,
since in the case of natural or man-made disasters (massive
Manuscript received October 21, 2010; revised April 25, 2011; accepted June 20, 2011.
Date of publication September 29, 2011; date of current version October 19, 2011.
M. Berioli and S. Scalise are with the Institute of Communications and Navigation,
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 Wessling, Germany (e-mail:
matteo.berioli@dlr.de; sandro.scalise@dlr.de).
A. Molinaro is with the Department of Informatics Mathematics Electronic and
Transport (DIMET), University BMediterranea[ of Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio
Calabria, Italy (e-mail: antonella.molinaro@unirc.it).
S. Morosi is with the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, University
of Florence, 50139 Florence, Italy (e-mail: simone.morosi@unifi.it).
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/JPROC.2011.2161737
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terrorist attacks belong to this last category) terrestrial
wireless and wired network infrastructures could be
severely damaged, so to become in many situations
completely unusable. In such a scenario, communication
satellites and high altitude platforms (HAPs) can be
regarded as a suitable Bemergency backbone[ to be used
for long-range connectivity, whereas ad hoc wireless
networks deployed on-site are, for sure, best suited to
recover local connectivity in limited areas.
Hence, in case of crisis or disaster management, space
and terrestrial systems are called to complement each other
in order to improve restoration capabilities and rescuing
effectiveness, during both the early phase just after the
disaster and the successive response phase. Space-based
systems can be effectively used as a backhauling solution to
collect/deliver data from/to terrestrial networks [1]–[3].
This can be especially advantageous to restore connectivity
in areas where long-range telecommunication infrastructures (e.g., cellular base stations) have been fully destroyed,
but it can also help in freeing network resources of partially
available terrestrial systems [4]–[8].
In these situations, connectivity must be rapidly deployed, robust, and resilient [9]–[14], in order to enable
rescue teams to coordinate and combine their efforts. To
this end, space-based systems, like satellites or HAPs, are a
unique asset. Where terrestrial networks existing before
the disaster are partially or totally destroyed, space-based
systems can effectively complement surviving telecommunication infrastructures (e.g., remaining cellular base
stations) and/or ad hoc deployed networks, e.g., Mobile
Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) or wireless sensor networks
(WSNs), to provide immediate restoration of connectivity
on a wide coverage.
Rapidly deployed ad hoc networks can also efficiently
support first responders’ interventions in the emergency
area. Ad hoc networking also increases dynamic and
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Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
real-time system reconfigurability, which is especially critical in the early disaster phase. In fact, MANETs are selforganized networks of mobile devices that exchange
information without relying on any preexisting fixed network infrastructure. WSNs, on the other hand, can make
first responders aware of current conditions on the monitored area, and can enable them to effectively face emergency situations. Beyond simple voice communication
needs, in fact, first responders need to be provided with
up-to-date information related to the position of other
rescue teams or victims, satellite observation data, maps,
locally monitored data, etc. So satellite or HAP extensions
for ad hoc radios (MANETs, WSNs) deployed in emergency
scenarios are considered of key importance for the future
[10]; they will enable the collection of the data from the
remote sensors distributed in the emergency area, and they
will allow first responders to connect with remote coordination centers, database sites, etc., in a flexible and reliable
manner.
For all these reasons the overall space-based system
must be designed to guarantee interoperability with a heterogeneity of networks, survived ones or ad hoc ones
deployed for the emergency situation; the final aim being
that of providing seamless communications between the
rescue teams in the critical area and coordination and
management centers.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II gives an
overview of the public safety communications scenarios
and of the state of the art in the field. Section III introduces the architectural approaches exploiting aerospace
communication infrastructure in the provision of emergency communications services. Section IV addresses issues related to user terminals. Section V describes the
potential improvements deriving from the usage of cooperative strategies both at lower layers and for networking
techniques. Considering the relevance of positioning and
localization in emergency scenarios, an own section,
Section VI, is dedicated to these issues. Last, conclusions
are drawn in Section VII.
II . BACKGROUND AND STATE OF
THE ART
The management of emergency situations can be divided
in four different phases which are depicted in Fig. 1; this
categorization is helpful also for the analysis of the
communications problems [15], [16].
• Preparedness: Preparation in terms of planning,
training of people, updating of solutions on the
basis of experience and information learned during
the different phases of past emergencies.
• Response: Alert to a catastrophic event, activation
of a control center for appropriate intervention on
the territory, intervention of first responders.
• Recovery: Completion of rescue actions and reestablishment of normal conditions.
Fig. 1. The phases of emergency.
•
Mitigation: Mitigation of consequences through
implementation of measures that prevent other
disasters and secure the disaster area.
The typical emergency scenario refers to a situation of
public emergency (e.g., fire, earthquake, flood, explosion,
big accident), where several rescuers, organized in teams,
convene to the emergency area from different locations, possibly with different transportation means, likely
equipped with tools for the intervention (e.g., water or
stretchers). They belong to one or more emergency response organizations, e.g., police, fire service, and emergency medical services.
Every member of the team, as well as the emergency
vehicles, is normally equipped with a portable radio
transceiver, with advanced and integrated navigation/
communication (NAV/COM) capabilities. Navigation capabilities are necessary to determine the terminal position
(desired accuracy would be 1–2 m), using both global
navigation satellite system (GNSS) services and, in case of
lack of a satellite radio link, terrestrial network-based
positioning methods. In some cases, also the members of
the same team or of other teams may need to know their
reciprocal positions, for safety reasons.
If possible, localization information is automatically
transmitted to the suitable entities as soon as it is available,
without human intervention. It is worth underlining that
position is not the only information to be transmitted in
the network: voice and data communications must be
guaranteed even in extremely critical conditions [17].
The following elements are part of a state-of-the-art
emergency network.
• A communication facility which guarantees the
connection (possibly through a satellite/HAP), between the emergency control center (ECC) and the
personnel operating in the emergency area. It is a
temporary, mobile, or transportable station placed
at the boundary of the emergency area and acting
as a master node for the local network.
• The HAP, moved on-demand above the emergency area to provide ad hoc and temporary
communications capabilities. It can connect the
mobile master node (MMN) with the ECC and
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possibly the emergency vehicles (which have
higher available power than the first responders’
terminals) with the MMN.
• The satellite, able to guarantee very long distance
communications between the MMN and the ECC
and the ECC and the emergency vehicle (EV).
The requirements of radio communication systems for
emergency rescue applications which have been issued by
international standardization committees have been
clearly identified and thoroughly described in [18]. Communication requirements for emergency services shall be
concerned with ensuring that the required information is
available to the correct person or organization at the
appropriate time. In essence, communications must be
timely, relevant, and accurate for all actions that may be
undertaken: particularly, the efficiency of the emergency
operations is dependent upon the ability of the communication networks to deliver timely information among
several authorized emergency personnel teams. This can
occur at various levels in the emergency situation, e.g.,
between mobile rescue teams, between an ECC and mobile
nodes, and between the temporary ECC and a permanent
public safety answering point.
Today, the responsibility for emergency response or
disaster-related communications is addressed differently
from country to country. In most cases, the parties responsible for warning and informing the public follow the
country’s administrative structures with coordinators at
both local and national levels, as well as across multiple
disciplines and departments. So, proper communication
systems are needed both for alerting the population and for
deploying the appropriate rescue teams [18].
The main requirements for providing efficient and
effective emergency services can be briefly categorized as
follows.
• Fast call setup: Typical requirements for voice call
establishment times are in the range 0.3–1 s, with
0.5 s often cited as the requirement for wide area
operation. For voice-over-satellite connections to a
remote ECC, such requirement shall be relaxed,
and call establishment times in the order of 1–2 s
are customary.
• Instant access: The need for radio capacity is increasing during major incidents and accidents, so
efforts have to be made to ensure, as much as possible, that sufficient communication facilities are
available.
• Quality of service: Voice (or data transmission) quality should be sufficient not to impair the understanding (or correct reception) of the message.
• Seamless radio coverage: Possibly throughout the
whole served area, availability of radio coverage
should be guaranteed also under exceptional
conditions (e.g., power supply outages, etc.).
• Controlled network access: In order to guarantee
controlled load of the network, priorities or restric1924
tions should be assigned to specific users, under
certain circumstances.
• Specific functionalities: Advanced features, such as
group communications and dispatching, security
and encryption, and dynamic resource management, would be very useful.
The fulfillment of the above requirements normally
remains under the responsibility of a variety of public authorities, such as national ministries responsible for emergency and security, international agencies, European and
national police, civil protection agencies, coast guard, fire
brigades, local authorities, etc.
Considering these requirements, the basic technology
solutions used today are professional mobile radio (PMR)
systems, such as terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) [19],
[20]. They are private radio networks and fixed communications system, which are normally shared among several
independent authorities, and can be supplemented by facilities provided by the public networks and their
resources. For example, TETRA provides today low data
rates (tens of kilobits per second), so some countries are
also deploying nationwide public safety broadband networks, e.g., in the United States based on the terrestrial
long term evolution (LTE) standard despite the fact that
the planned TETRA enhanced data service (TEDS) could
offer data rates of one order of magnitude higher. Existing
private third/fourth generation (3G/4G) networks could
also be exploited in these cases, but public authorities
cannot rely on privately owned infrastructure. In addition,
whereas cellular networks, like global system for mobile
communications (GSM), universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS), or LTE, can provide coverage of
wide areas, other wireless networks, like worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) and wireless
local area networks (WLANs), have normally only limited
coverage (there are exceptions for some WiMAX regional
operators). Broadband terrestrial communications are in
most cases not sufficiently reliable during emergency,
since they mostly rely on a centralized infrastructure and
on power supply, and they may provide only limited
coverage of the emergency area.
Risk assessments, together with the idea of converging
towards cross services and international collaboration,
have led to an emphasis on interoperability between various services. For this collaboration to be efficient, the
communication systems in use have to be interoperable.
Interoperability means that the radio devices fit into all
participating networks and that all necessary functions can
be made available to users in a different network (similar
to roaming). Networks connected to each other work like
an overall network comprising various parts. In practice, it
means that a police officer, for example, can continue
working on her/his radio terminal in a neighboring country without interruption. She/he can communicate with
the control room and colleagues both in her/his own
county and in the neighboring country. This cross-border
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Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
interoperability would be eased by the use of the same
standard; that is why many countries in the world have
chosen to install a TETRA network.
The use of the space segment (HAP, but most likely
satellites) is unavoidable in this scenario, and the
architecture that will be considered is thus intrinsically
heterogeneous and hybrid, able to keep the interaction
between partially or totally survived networks and ad hoc
networks deployed on the emergency scenario to fill
coverage holes. In this architecture, the space infrastructure plays a key role for its independence from the
catastrophic event. Moreover, the synergic use of communication and positioning services, provided by means of
architectures based on satellite segments, can afford remarkable gains in terms of effectiveness, speed of response, and performance in all phases of emergency
situation management.
A. Relevant Research Work
The design and the implementation of communication
systems for emergency scenarios are currently issues for
many research, implementation, and standardization activities. In such a framework, a major role is being played by
Europe with plenty of projects and research activities being
funded by the European Commission: among the others,
Emergency Support System (ESS) [21], EULER (EUropean
software defined radio for wireless in joint security operations) [22], Seamless Communication for Crisis Management (SECRICOM) [23], Services and Applications for
Emergency Response (SAFER) [24], Wireless Infrastructure over Satellite for Emergency Communications
(WISECOM) [25], Integrating Communications for Enhanced Environmental Risk Management and Citizens
Safety (CHORIST) [26], and IP-based Emergency Applications and serviCes for nExt generation networks (PEACE)
[27] are worth mentioning. In the framework of the aforementioned projects, important results have been achieved
about control and management of major crisis events,
enhancement of the responsiveness capabilities of the security operators, provision of enhanced localization services
and data fusion, integration of navigation and communication functionalities in a single terminal, interoperability,
and software-defined radio (SDR) implementation.
The standardization bodies are also very active in the
field; concerning specific satellite working groups the
ETSI SatEC (Satellite Emergency Communications) is
worth mentioning, which is producing a good overview on
satellite backhauling solutions [28].
Moreover, it is important to recall the parallel research
activities which have been developed in the United States
by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
[29] with a strong emphasis on requirements in critical
conditions and secure and scalable application of heterogeneous networks.
Finally, several contributions have been recently
published also concerning the following topics: heteroge-
neous networks built with transparent satellites and HAP
components [30], [31], multipurpose gateways [32],
security issues in an emergency scenario, localization
and tagging of the victims and of the responders [33]–[35].
So the field is very broad and heterogeneous, with
contributions and works in many directions; this paper will
try to review it starting from the possible system
architecture approaches, the properties of the terminals,
and then moving to the technologies used at the different
layers, and the integration of communication and navigation services.
III . ARCHITECTURAL APPROACHES
A transparent geostationary (GEO) satellite is the most
common and straightforward way to provide satellite services in an emergency scenario: in case of emergency
situations the deployment of a satellite very small aperture
terminals (VSAT) is very rapid. The classical way of operating these networks is to connect the remote satellite
terminals located in the disaster area to a gateway located
in a safe region, far away from the disaster; this architectural approach is called in literature the transparent star
satellite network.
Nonetheless star transparent satellite networks are not
the only solution; meshed satellite networks can also be
setup with a transparent satellite. Very promising
alternative architectures can be achieved using regenerative satellites, which are able to setup fully meshed
networks. Finally, other possibilities consider the use of
satellites operating in low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium
Earth orbit (MEO) constellations and HAPs. Fig. 2 shows
the frequency bands currently allocated for satellite
communications.
Whichever the chosen alternative, emergency systems
can certainly benefit from the synergic interworking between space-based communications and terrestrial networks, especially the ones showing fast deployment and
dynamic reconfiguration capabilities. This section presents
the pros and cons of these different space-based
approaches.
A. GEO Satellites
Geostationary satellites lie on the equatorial plane at a
distance of 35 786 km from the Earth; at this distance they
rotate around the Earth with a period of 24 h (equal to the
Earth rotation period), so they appear from ground as a
fixed point in the sky. They have been used since the
beginning of satellite communications, and the technology
they have onboard has evolved a lot since then: today we
can build geostationary satellites of a few tons, with several
kilowatt power payload and with large reflectors of more
than 20 m. In spite of the long distance, resulting in free
space loss above 150 dB, this guarantees good link budgets
and the possibility to have terminals on ground with relatively small antennas, especially in L and S bands, whereas
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Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
implying an unavoidable propagation delay equal to
roughly 0.25 s (in each direction). Indeed, for a scenario
with a few satellite terminals deployed in the disaster area
aiming to connect with a few remote control centers, a
meshed satellite network could offer significant advantages
in terms of resource usage and delay performance. Meshed
satellite configurations can be transparent or regenerative,
depending on the functionalities of the payload.
Fig. 2. Frequency bands for satellite communications.
for higher frequencies normally parabolic dish with high
directivity is needed. The main constraints are often linked
to the need of having direct line-of-sight to the satellite; in
fact, at high latitudes the satellite is visible with a small
elevation angle over the horizon, and at very high latitudes
(above 75 –80 ), GEO satellites are not usable at all.
1) Transparent Star Satellite Networks: Transparent geostationary satellites, especially operating in L and Ku
bands, are today covering almost all inhabited landmass
areas on the Earth and most of the oceans and seas along
the main international shipping routes. That is why for
emergencies in all these regions they are a very straightforward solution.
An operator is managing the satellite through a gateway
station that provides connection for all satellite terminals
under the satellite coverage to terrestrial networks, like
the Internet and the public switched telephone network
(PSTN); that is the reason why the topology is called star,
because all communications have to go through the central
gateway.
The major drawback of the star topology is represented
by the fact that all data are sent over the network hub,
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2) Transparent Meshed Satellite Networks: Some satellites
provide the possibility to switch uplink signals to downlink
channels, which may be different from the uplink ones;
the switching may also be done across multiple spotbeams.
In this case, the resulting meshed network is considered to
be transparent if the onboard switching is static and performed on the analog signals and the signals are not demodulated onboard. For this reason, the switching is
normally performed as a frequency shift, and some uplink
carriers are just amplified and shifted to different downlink carriers.
By knowing the static configuration of the onboard
switch, it is possible to build a meshed network on ground,
even if the satellite, being purely transparent, is not collaborating. This can be guaranteed by a central coordination
point, the Network Control Center (NCC), which normally communicates to all terminals in the network by
means of a dedicated signaling channel: if two terminals
want to establish a communication between them, the
NCC allocates them on two carriers which are known to be
connected in the onboard switch.
The main advantage of this solution, with respect to the
transparent star network, is that direct communication
between two terminals is possible and the user data do not
need to go through the satellite gateway (or hub). This has
two main consequences, in case of end-to-end data connections between two satellite terminals in the same
network:
1) saving of two satellite-ground hops (roughly
250-ms propagation time), which basically means
halving the propagation delay between the two
terminals;
2) saving of radio resources on the link between the
satellite and the hub, which basically means halving the use of the radio resources in the satellite
network both for point-to-point and point-tomultipoint connections, and thus it enables increasing the overall satellite system capacity.
The case of in-field direct communications between
two terminals served by the same satellite may be quite
common in emergency scenarios, considering that the rescue teams on the field may have to coordinate among
them by using satellite connections if terrestrial infrastructures are not available. In addition, the 50% saving in
resource allocation applies both for unicast and for
multicast connections thanks to the intrinsic broadcasting
nature of the satellite (all receiving terminals just need one
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Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
channel on the downlink). It should be said that multicast
traffic can be very important in emergency scenario, e.g.,
when a terminal on the field is multicasting some data
(maps, alerts, or commands) to a group of other terminals
in the same area. So, for all these reasons, the use of
meshed satellite networks proves to be very promising for
emergency scenarios.
It is also possible, and this is a recent research topic, to
design a transparent meshed system with decentralized
control, where the resource management is done by means
of a distributed algorithm running on all terminals. The
main motivation for this is the reliability of the system. In
the centralized scenarios (both star and meshed) there is a
single point of failure in the system: the hub/NCC, which
may also be affected by the disaster and thus may be not
available. An additional disadvantage of the centralized
approach is that it may be necessary to deploy a hub/NCC
station in the satellite footprint covering the mission site,
and this may be quite challenging if we think to international missions where rescue teams are sent far away from
their originating country. Distributed resource allocation
algorithms can help solving these problems and, if used in
a meshed approach, can also guarantee an efficient use of
the satellite airtime.
3) Regenerative Meshed Satellite Networks: The disadvantage of transparent satellite systems is the low granularity
in the allocation of the channels. Normally, being the
satellite transparent, the resources are allocated on a radio
frequency (RF) channel basis, which means that each terminal gets one RF channel for one unidirectional traffic
flow. The terminal can try to multiplex different types of
traffic on the channel to get a high utilization, especially if
it is backhauling over the satellite traffic for a small local
area network, but rarely high efficiencies are achieved, due
to the bursty nature of the IP traffic. The only way to
overcome this is to enable real-time dynamic allocation of
the satellite resources, based on the traffic demand of the
terminals. This requires some kind of onboard processing
and normally associated onboard switching.
The types of onboard switching, which require
manipulation of the uplink signals (so not just amplify
and forward of the uplink signal, as the one described in
Section III-A2), fall in the category of regenerative meshed
satellites. There can be many types of onboard switching
for regenerative satellites (see also Fig. 3), which can be
performed theoretically at all layers of the protocol stack,
from baseband sampling to IP routing. Depending on this
design and on the complexity of the satellite payload, the
onboard matrix switch may be dynamically configured
from ground by the NCC (through out-of-band signaling)
or may switch single packets or frames, by reading predefined in-band tags or labels in the bit stream. The level of
granularity in the resource allocation can consequently
change from IP flows down to IP packets, layer-2 protocol
data units (PDUs) or physical layer bursts.
Fig. 3. Regenerative payload support: Possible onboard
switching variants.
The dynamic resource allocation scheme together with
onboard switching can thus allow a very efficient use of the
radio resources, especially when meshed connectivity is
required, which is common in emergency scenarios. The
drawback of regenerative satellites is that once the satellite
payload is designed and launched, it has to be used for
almost 15 years (usual lifetime of a GEO satellite) with
only minor chances to change it. This poses serious constraints on the waveforms and the type of signaling that the
onboard processor is able to process. Even if in some cases
firmware updates of the onboard processor are possible,
this is a limiting factor for the evolution of the terminals on
ground once the satellite is already flying.
Finally, the full exploitation of a regenerative satellite
requires specific capabilities in the terminals, which, for
example, need to know the format of the tags or labels to
be prefixed to the transmitted packets. Not all terminals in
a meshed satellite network may have these capabilities, but
it is normally possible to let regenerative and transparent
satellite networks coexist on the same satellite.
B. LEO and MEO Constellations
Today LEO constellations also exist that support voice
communications (e.g., Iridium, Globalstar) and messaging
and data (e.g., Orbcomm); only one of them (Iridium) also
integrates intersatellite links (ISLs).
Satellites on LEO and MEO move faster than the Earth
rotation, and this implies that at each pass every ground
terminal has direct visibility to a satellite only for a limited
time, normally in the order of tens of minutes. In these few
minutes a connection between the satellite and the ground
terminal can be established to transfer different types of
data: Earth observation data, telemetry and telecontrol
data, multimedia (in case of satellite digital radio), etc.
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Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
Fig. 4. Mean visibility time of a satellite on circular orbit at
646.7-km altitude, 54 inclination, and 10 minimum elevation
angle for different ground station latitudes.
Depending on the service provided, LEO and MEO
constellations can be designed with or without continuous
coverage. Continuous coverage means that visibility from
ground stations to a minimum number of satellites has to
be always guaranteed; this is needed for services which
have to be provided in real time by the satellite. On the
other hand, some types of services, e.g., messaging, do not
need continuous coverage, since the data stored on the
satellite can be downloaded when it passes over a specific
ground station.
Fig. 4 shows the average visibility time between a satellite and a ground terminal for an inclined constellation;
this visibility time can be computed analytically [36]. It is
clear that for communications lasting longer than this
visibility time a handover to another satellite has to be
foreseen, which makes things complex in case the terminals are using directive antennas. For this reason, existing
systems are operating in frequency bands below 2 GHz
(VHF for Orbcomm, L-band for Iridium and Globalstar)
where omnidirectional antennas can be used. This, together with the limited available spectrum, is however
limiting the data rate to values in the order of tens of
kilobits per second, which is not sufficient for many key
applications in emergency scenarios. On the other hand,
LEO/MEO satellites have some advantages that make them
very attractive also for emergency applications: the propagation delay to the LEO and MEO satellites is much
smaller than the one to a GEO satellite (this is very useful
for real-time interactive services, like voice); some constellations, especially polar ones like Iridium, can cover the
polar areas where GEO satellites cannot be used.
Both Iridium and Globalstar are today in the process of
replacing the existing fleet with new generation satellites,
which should enable higher data rates.
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C. High Altitude Platforms
HAPs are quasi-stationary aerial platforms operating in
the stratosphere at an altitude between 17 and 22 km. The
platforms may be manned or unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs), like airplanes or airships (typically balloons), with
autonomous operation and remote control from the
ground [37]. HAPs can provide communication facilities
that combine some positive features of both terrestrial and
satellite systems and also give their own advantages. They
offer fast and incremental deployment, low maintenance
and upgrading costs, easy payload reconfigurability, and
high flexibility to respond to traffic demands. HAPs have
large coverage and broadcast capability like the satellites,
but they benefit from lower free-space loss compared with
them. HAPs have relatively short propagation delay like
terrestrial systems, but they have less problems with obstructions (e.g., they do not suffer from shadowing at high
latitudes) compared with them.
Thanks to their distinctive features and also to some
recent advances in platform technology (e.g., materials,
solar cells, energy storage), HAPs showed up as an attractive solution for a wide range of applications and services:
from multicast [38], [39] to broadband [40] communications, to remote sensing and environmental monitoring
[41], to connectivity provisioning in disadvantaged and
sparsely populated areas [42], [43]. The following HAPs’
distinctive features make them an attractive opportunity
for providing connectivity in emergency areas.
• Rapid deployment: HAPs enable rapid rollout of
services (a matter of hours); this makes them
suitable especially during the early phase right
after the disaster for fast emergency service
deployment.
• Mobility on demand: stratospheric platforms are
easily portable to cover the emergency area.
• Ad hoc hot spot coverage: The HAPs’ coverage region is basically determined by line-of-sight propagation and the minimum elevation angle at the
ground terminal. Practical values for this angle
might be 5 , or, more typically, 15 to avoid excessive ground clutter problems [37]. From 20-km
altitude above smooth terrain, this implies a large
coverage area (hundreds kilometers radius). This
coverage can be also subdivided into smaller cells
(based on the antenna design) and dynamically
reconfigured to suit emergency needs.
• High capacity and favorable path loss: Higher capacity with HAPs is enabled by much more advantageous link budget values compared to satellites,
since the HAP is at a relatively close range distance. Compared with terrestrial systems, a HAP
can offer equivalent capacity to that provided by a
large number of base stations. These capabilities
are essential in emergency scenarios to provide
reliable connectivity services that go beyond the
simple voice communications.
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•
Broadcasting and multicasting capability: Broadcast
and multicast communications need to be established in an emergency scenario to coordinate first
responder teams or deliver specific data to given
groups (e.g., message dispatching, maps, images,
or video of the monitored area). HAPs have shown
to be able to effectively and efficiently support
group-based communications [38], [44] in disadvantaged areas.
• GNSS support: HAPs can also support services for
GNSSs, like GPS, and Galileo [45], [46], and act as
an augmentation infrastructure for these systems.
Such capabilities greatly help in providing localization information even under hostile propagation
conditions for the GNSS signals that could occur in
emergency areas.
• Integration capability with both satellite and terrestrial networks: HAPs can be easily integrated into
2G/3G cellular systems [38], [47], [48], and have
capabilities to interwork with different types of
terrestrial networks [40], [49]. A HAP can be
employed as a backup or a moving base station for
covering areas partially served by terrestrial networks, or it can also provide full service coverage
in areas where no terrestrial network is active [50].
It has been shown that, when the terrestrial
network is partially or completely disabled, an
overlaid HAP 3G network is able to provide a more
than adequate service in both coverage and
capacity [43], [50]. Furthermore, HAPs can also
efficiently complement a terrestrial-satellite system and play a potential role in beyond-3G
networks [51].
• Line-of-sight collection point and backhauling: HAPs/
UAVs can be used to collect and distribute information from localized sensor networks deployed
for monitoring and control purposes [41]. The
capability to access data in situ may greatly help the
coordination of intervention in case of natural
disaster or terrorist attacks. Furthermore, HAPs
are able to work as a backhauling solution for terrestrial ad hoc networks that could rapidly be deployed among first-responder teams moving in the
disaster area [49].
Still, some technological challenges exist that hinder
the successful development of HAPs, the major one being
the ability of the HAP to maintain its position in the face of
winds [52].
D. Summary
In summary, transparent GEO-based solutions are
today the only applicable architecture for operational scenarios. The evolution towards fully meshed and decentralized networks represents the logical step. LEO/MEO
constellations can become attractive only if the offered
data rate will be at least one order of magnitude larger than
the one currently offered. Whether and when the next
generation of Iridium and Globalstar will meet such
requirements is today unclear. Last but not least, HAPs
represent a very interesting complement to satellite,
providing a means to solve the aforementioned technical
challenges.
IV. TERMINAL ISSUES
The driving factors today in the selection of the communication technology to be used after an emergency are the
characteristics of the terminals: portability, weight, ease of
deployment, etc. In contrast to commercial mass-market
applications, cost is not the main driver for governmental
and professional users, though it certainly plays also a role.
In the first hours after a disaster, the existing solutions to
overcome communication problems when terrestrial
infrastructures are not available are the use of small
handheld terminals, such as the national very highfrequency (VHF) terrestrial radio systems, PMR devices,
such as TETRA, which can only operate locally, or the use
of satellite phones (such as Thuraya, Globalstar, or
Iridium) to get connection to public networks. A few
years ago it was proposed to adopt more bulky technologies,
which exploit satellite backhauling (e.g., Emergesat [53],
TRACKS [54]) and VSATs. In this way users can use
traditional handhelds (WiFi, GSM/UMTS) to communicate to a local base station, which then reestablishes a
connection to public networks over a satellite; these
solutions offer a broadband wireless telecommunication
infrastructure to transmit both voice and data, but they
require many hours to several days to be brought to the
place of the disaster.
The last development in this direction was the
WISECOM project [55], which is also based on the principle of satellite backhauling as shown in Fig. 5, but
according to a paradigm with phases. When observing the
different necessities that arise after a disaster event, two
different phases can be established: during the first
Bresponse[ phase, basic communication needs have to be
provided to assist victims and coordinate the different
rescue forces, therefore, rapidity and easiness of deployment of the communication infrastructure become the
most important conditions that must be accomplished by
the system; in the second Brestore[ phase, robustness and
reliability when providing broadband communications are
the most important assets. In order to satisfy these
requirements, WISECOM was developed in two different
versions. The difference between the two versions is the
satellite technology which is used to for the backhauling,
an L-band system (Inmarsat BGAN) for the response
phase, and a Ku/Ka-band system (e.g., DVB-RCS) for the
restore phase.
The L-band backhauling terminal can be deployed very
easily and rapidly (the satellite pointing needs only low
precision and thus it can be performed by not specialized
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Fig. 6. Antenna gains and relative beam opening angle
(half-power beamwidth) for different antenna diameters and
frequencies. Source: ITU.
Fig. 5. Block diagram of the WISECOM access terminal.
workers); the L-band antenna is small enough to be transported in a ruggedized case by a single person; so the
simple installation and starting procedure can be quickly
carried out in about 5 min by nontechnicians. The Ku/
Ka-band terminal is much more powerful and provides
broadband connection to the handhelds, but it has to be
transported with the help of a vehicle, such as a four-wheel
drive or a helicopter. The mounting and deployment of the
system are performed in approximately 30 min, especially
because of the precise pointing of the satellite antenna,
which would normally need a trained and certified
operator.
As for a general assessment of a terminal it is clear that
bigger (and thus more directional) antennas present a
smaller half-power beamwidth; hence, they need a more
precise pointing (see also Fig. 6), and thus imply longer
deployment times. Moreover, larger antennas present
higher directivity gains and thus enable higher bit rates.
For this reason, many solutions have recently been proposed to enable or to ease an automatic pointing of the
antennas: mechanically steered dish antennas, hybrid
mechanical–electronic phased array and reflect array,
the very novel liquid-crystal antennas, inflatable [56] and
textile antennas (see also [57] for a comprehensive
overview).
Trends for the future should however foster the convergence of the two approaches, namely handheld terminals directly connecting to the satellite and/or to the
1930
terrestrial access network (if available), but also capable to
rely on a backhauling station, or even act themselves as
backhauling station and relay traffic coming from other
terminals. While a new generation of dual-mode phones
with enhanced 3G/4G/SatCom capabilities (TerreStar
Genus Phone manufactured by Elektrobit, Inmarsat ISat
Phone) is about to appear or has recently appeared on the
market, for TETRA terminals interoperability and crossborders operation is still an important challenge to be
faced in the next years. On a longer term basis, the advent
of software-defined radio (SDR) technologies is seen as
promising solution to reduce costs, enable a variety of
radio interfaces to be available in the same device, and
facilitate interoperability. In that respect, useful recommendations concerning issues associated with SDR technology for the public safety/public protection and disaster
response application area are provided in a study carried
out by the Public Safety Special Interest Group of the
Wireless Innovation forum [58].
V. COOPERATIVE S TRATEGIES
The integration of space-based and terrestrial communication capabilities into an emergency system architecture
(an example is shown in Fig. 7) is crucial in order to guarantee network connectivity and effective data distribution
in the disaster area.
In this scenario, satellites or HAPs assist the job of
search-and-rescue teams by providing them with remote
connectivity to/from the emergency control centers and
with real-time up-to-date information from the disaster
area. On the other hand, ad hoc deployed wireless networks can provide local connectivity or compensate for
lack of direct satellite visibility in hostile propagation environments. Space-based systems also may offer backhauling capability to self-organizing distributed wireless
networks (like MANETs and WSNs), and help in
unloading the congested (survived) wireless terrestrial
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network coding [62]. Furthermore, any opportunity of
communications should be exploited in order to enable
effective data collection and distribution. This calls for
new communication paradigms that include opportunistic
and delay/disruption tolerant networking, which are
especially useful in the intermittent connectivity scenario
in which first-aid teams will play. These forms of users’
cooperation will be discussed in Section V-B.
Fig. 7. Overall picture of an emergency communication scenario
with an integration of terrestrial and space-based infrastructures.
infrastructure (e.g., 3G, WiMAX networks), which are
typically relying on terrestrial power supply systems and
thus are not immune to ground disasters.
In the depicted scenario, it is mandatory:
• to guarantee data connectivity for enabling communications with first-aid personnel soon after the
disaster in order to 1) assess conditions of disasterhit people and to get a full picture of the situation;
and 2) coordinate actions of rescue teams on the
field;
• to provide effective data collection and distribution
from/to the emergency area where typically multicast traffic (e.g., message dispatching, electronic
pictures, or map of the monitored site) shall be
spread among first responders and between them
and the coordination center.
Cooperative communications offer an answer to the
above mentioned requirements. Cooperation has shown to
be a powerful paradigm to achieve significantly better
performance than traditional communication models [59].
Node cooperation is based on resource sharing and may
have multiple facets: from frequency sharing to improved
spectrum efficiency, to antenna sharing for achieving
spatial diversity, and to collaborative relaying for increasing the channel capacity [61].
Relaying can be very useful in an emergency scenario
where gap fillers allow communications with an end-user
whose satellite link is characterized by bad channel condition, or where a dual-radio mobile device acts as a gateway
to a MANET of cooperating first-responders. Examples of
node cooperation through the use of static or mobile nodes
playing the relaying function to enable data connectivity in
hostile propagation conditions will be discussed in
Section V-A.
Node cooperation can also be effective in efficiently
exploiting the limited radio spectrum through higher layers techniques that allow overhead reduction, e.g.,
A. Cooperative Relaying
Cooperative relaying can be very effective in improving
reliability and overall system performance: this could be
especially important when the connectivity in a disaster
area is to be restored.
Hybrid satellite/terrestrial cooperative relaying strategies have been proposed for public emergency situations
with the aim of guaranteeing communication between the
emergency area and the external areas [63]. As an example
of the achievable performance gain, this section shows
how the combination of the hybrid satellite/terrestrial
network OFDM-based proposed by the DVB-SH standard
(SH-A Architecture) with the cooperative delay diversity
(DD) relaying technique [60] can be effective to overcome
the performance loss of the non-line-of-sight environment.
In the proposed cooperative scheme, the spatial diversity is
transformed into frequency diversity, which makes the
error distribution change: this feature can be exploited by
the use of FEC codes with a remarkable improvement of
the performance.
In the considered system, both the satellite component
(SC) and the complementary ground component (CGC)
are considered and a cyclic prefix is introduced to avoid
intersymbol interference at the receiver.
Fig. 8. Performance comparison of DVB-SH system among:
Satellite-only, terrestrial-only, one-relay cooperative DD and
two-relay cooperative DD in city environment.
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Results of computer simulations are presented in Fig. 8;
the following representative working conditions were
selected: signal bandwidth 5 MHz, mode 1 K, OFDM
sampling frequency 40/7 MHz, OFDM symbol duration
179.2 s, OFDM guard interval 44.8 s, QPSK modulation,
turbo code (coderate 1/4). The channel propagation models
used are: Lutz model and TU6 model for the satellite and
the terrestrial channel, respectively [64].
The one-relay and two-relay schemes are considered in
an urban environment, which represents the worst case.
The bit error rate (BER) performance is reported for
different values of the delay in order to represent the impact
of this value on the DD scheme; besides, to implement a
more realistic case, a different power allocation between the
SC and the CGC is assumed (unequal power): particularly,
the copies of the signals coming from the CGCs (all types) are
characterized by a higher power level with respect to the
signal directly transmitted from the satellite.
In order to highlight the BER performance of the
N-relay cooperative DD system with CGC-GapFillers, the
N ¼ 1 and N ¼ 2 cases are depicted in Fig. 8: the two-relay
system gains 4–5 dB (delay depending) for BER ¼ 103
over the one-relay system. Therefore, the presence of more
than one relay, increasing the frequency selectivity of the
channel transfer function, permits to achieve a performance improvement in terms of BER.
Relaying can be very effective also in supporting groupbased communications, which play a key role in emergency areas. In this scenario, several first-responder teams
(e.g., fire, police, or other local authority brigades) will
operate simultaneously within the critical area; each team
may need to establish multicast connections for specific
information delivery (e.g., dispatching maps, or video) or
for coordination of its members.
3G cellular systems (UMTS) and related evolutionary
systems, such as high speed packet access (HSPA) and
LTE, are currently the most pervasive and viable solution
to convey broadcast/multicast services to mobile users.
Notwithstanding, a terrestrial-only multimedia broadcast/
multicast services (MBMS) system cannot be reliable in
case of damages in the cellular ground infrastructure; furthermore, it can be insufficient to satisfy the strict requirements of multicast services in terms of bandwidth and
power resources from the base station. In this case, a HAP
can be employed as a portable 3G/4G base station (NodeB
or eNodeB) for covering areas where the cellular network
may be partially or totally destroyed, and a terrestrial
ad hoc wireless network can be deployed to complement
the cellular coverage.
In Fig. 9, a portable HAP behaving as an UMTS base
station serves two rescue teams (e.g., police and fire brigades) interested in downloading multicast services from a
remote server. First-aid team members are equipped with
Wi-Fi ad hoc connectivity and cooperate for multicast information delivery in the multihop access segment. In
order to avoid congestion on the cellular network and ef1932
Fig. 9. Example of cooperative relaying for multicast transmissions:
An anchor node relays data from a portable HAP playing the role of
a UMTS base station to a MANET of team members.
ficiently exploit the limited radio spectrum, only some
team members, provided with dual-radio end-devices, play
the role of mobile anchor nodes, download traffic from the
HAP-UMTS link, and relay it through the Wi-Fi radio interface to the neighboring team members organized in a
MANET over unlicensed spectrum frequencies. The number of team members connected to the same anchor node
depends on their mutual reachability that, in turn, is related to the Wi-Fi radius coverage and the number of hops
in the MANET. For each rescue team, one or more anchor
nodes can be elected based on quality of the cellular link,
residual battery lifetime, and mobility. Nodes with good
channel quality, high available power, and low mobility
will be considered as favorite candidates. Also static nodes
can be used as anchor points; this can be the case of a
wireless router mounted on an emergency vehicle and
powered by vehicular batteries.
In this scenario, cooperation between the MANET and
the HAP-enhanced cellular system showed to effectively
help the delivery of multicast data traffic to each group by
saving transmission power of the local base station [65]
and battery lifetime of end-user devices, and by boosting
capacity and radio coverage in the incident area network
[39]. The gain in capacity compared to traditional UMTS
systems obviously decreases with the number of hops in
the MANET and with the number of involved devices; this
is due to the carrier sense multiple access mechanism of
the Wi-Fi network that is sensitive to interference and
collisions.
B. New Paradigms for Efficient Data Collection
and Distribution
After a natural disaster, in case of power supply outages, communication shall rely on battery-operated
wireless devices, such as first-responders’ handheld
devices (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, laptops) operating in
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ad hoc communication mode, and on wireless routers
powered by vehicular batteries. Such devices can hardly
form a single connected network at any given time; hence
disaster relief networks should typically be disruption
tolerant. Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) is a newly
emerging network paradigm, which deals with communications in extreme challenging environments, such
as deep-space and crisis scenarios [66]–[69]. In these
environments, a continuous end-to-end path between the
source and the destination is usually not guaranteed;
therefore, the DTN works as an overlay architecture that is
based on the store, carry, and forward paradigm.
There has been a significant amount of work on routing
in DTNs. Routing protocols proposed for general DTNs are
not always suitable for disaster-response networks, as they
primarily target high delivery ratio at the expense of
message redundancy which consumes significant energy.
Some routing protocols [70], [71] rely on specific nodes
(data mules) with controlled mobility patterns, which deliver messages among other nodes. Other protocols, like
epidemic routing [72] and its variants [73], replicate messages whenever a node meets another one which has not
received the same message so far. Epidemic dissemination
achieves good delivery ratio, but at expenses of communication overhead, which is a problem in emergency scenarios. Other schemes fix the number of times a message can
be replicated [74] in order to take overhead under control.
Another approach to DTN routing is to use prior information about network connectivity to achieve very high delivery rates at low overhead [75]. This approach can hardly
be applied in emergency scenarios due to a general lack of
knowledge of the network connectivity.
A key performance objective of disaster-response networks is to minimize energy consumption in order to
prolong the lifetime of battery-operated devices until infrastructure is restored. With the aim of reducing the
number of copies (and hence saving energy), recurrent
contacts can be exploited [76] to deliver a message to the
destination. Recurrence exists in disaster-response areas
because of some regularity in the movements of involved
response forces (e.g., rescue, utility, fire, police): medical
supplies are delivered to gathering points, some locations
are used as evacuation camps and for relief operation
management, volunteers also converge to some predefined
locations, police cars patrol given routes, fire vehicles start
at fire stations, etc.
Another useful and quite recent technique, relevant for
this scenario, is network coding. Network coding is effective in scenarios where multiple nodes send their data to
multiple receivers. The general idea of network coding is
to allow intermediate nodes, which distribute these packets, to retransmit functions of these frames, e.g., linear
combinations [62]. Such a technique is proven to achieve
the cut-set bound for a variety of networks composed by
point-to-point links. The simplest case is the two-way relay
channel, where one central relay R is in direct commu-
Fig. 10. Bidirectional communication between two terminals with
relay and network coding applied in the gateway.
nication with two other terminals A and B which need to
exchange a data stream, but have no direct link between
them (Fig. 10). In the conventional network-coded approach, A and B send their packets to R (using one slot
each), then R will forward a new packet that is the bitwise
xor of the two frames. Both A and B can recover the
desired frame, since each terminal knows the sum of the
two packets (sent by R) and its own frame. This procedure
can save up to 50% of the link capacity. In the emergency
scenarios, it can be very effectively used in the backhauling links, where, e.g., it can be used to save satellite
capacity.
Random linear network coding (RLNC) has also been
shown to be very efficient in supporting broadcast and
multicast transmissions in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks [77]–[79]; it gets benefits not only in terms of
throughput, but also in terms of complexity, scalability,
security, and especially energy saving, which directly affect
terminals’ battery lifetime and are therefore critical for
emergency scenarios. This is an important result for disaster relief scenarios where the capability of disseminating information from multiple sources to all nodes is
necessary to provide a common operational picture of the
disaster area. RLNC has also been shown as reliable and
robust when combined with probabilistic routing [80],
[81] in an extremely challenging ad hoc environment
where end-to-end connectivity is rare. Such environments
are typical of emergency scenarios with sparse connectivity where nodes (e.g., vehicles that act as data mules
across disconnected platoons) Bmeet[ occasionally to
exchange information, since regular communication
services are disrupted due to infrastructure damage and
power outages.
VI . POSITIONING S ERVICE S
For proper decision making, it is important to keep track of
all resources (people and materials) involved in the
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disaster. For this reason, effort has been spent in studying
positioning systems for emergency scenarios and their
integration with the communication infrastructures.
The integration of navigation and communication systems [82]–[84] allows the exploitation of both navigation
information for communication purpose [85] (optimization of communication techniques, interference reduction, and location-based information services delivery)
as well as communication supports for navigation
purpose [86] (high precision localization, cooperative
positioning).
A. Positioning and Localization
Positioning and localization systems such as GPS, the
Russian GLONASS, the Indian IRNSS, the Chinese
COMPASS, and the European Galileo are generally referred to as GNSSs. They exploit the presence of satellites
to provide localization information to ground terminals.
Other regional positioning systems can exploit cellular
terrestrial or other aerial systems, such as HAPs. All these
systems are based on the estimation of the relative position
of the terminal with respect to some reference points. This
is done through techniques like: received signal strength
(RSS) [87], time of arrival (TOA), time-difference of arrival (TDOA) [88], or angle of arrival (AOA). TOA measurements, or pseudoranges, have to be performed from a
minimum of four reference stations (e.g., satellites).
In general, there are several primary error sources
affecting the estimation of the terminal position, such as
multipath propagation, local oscillator drift and bias, system filter propagation delays, or antenna and receiver
channel line biases. For these reasons, the position
accuracies achieved today are in the order of a few
meters, in best cases. In order to enhance the accuracy,
the integrity, the availability, and the continuity of the
navigation system, GNSSs are assisted by some augmentation solutions. This is basically accomplished by placing
a reference station at a precisely known location in the
vicinity of a user, or where high accuracy navigation is
required. Equipped with a GNSS receiver, the reference
station measures the ranges to each of the satellites in
view, demodulates the navigation message, and, depending on the type of parameter, can compute several types of
corrections to be applied to the user’s receiver in order to
improve its performance. Augmentation systems make it
possible to achieve position accuracies of several centimeters or less.
The main augmentation systems currently available are
differential GPS (DGPS), the satellite-based augmentation
systems (SBASs), real-time kinematics (RTK) systems, and
the assisted-GNSS (A-GNSS): while DGPS, SBAS, and
RTK require the deployment of a specific terrestrial network of reference stations that must be provided with the
updated information to share, the A-GNSS approach is
based on a cooperative approach and it seems particularly
suited for emergency scenarios.
1934
B. Cooperative Localization
The use of hybrid positioning systems can increase
accuracy and reliability by combining the pseudorange
measurements of both GNSS and terrestrial ranging systems [89]. In emergency scenarios, the use of these cooperative approaches is mandatory, as the environmental
conditions where the users’ terminals are likely to be used
can be extremely hostile for a standard GPS-based navigation receiver (indoor environments, urban canyons, operations under foliage, etc.). Assisted-GNSS systems improve
the standalone GNSS localization performance by using
alternative networks instead of satellites (e.g., cellular
network or the Internet) to send the assistance data where
there is no clear view of sky (e.g., light-indoor zones). An
innovative A-GNSS-like system, which does not rely on the
existence of a prestructured communication infrastructure, is presented in [90]. It relies on a Bpeer-based[ cooperation architecture in which each user’s device (the
aiding user) acts as a server and sends its own estimated
satellite localization data to the aided user.
While rescuers are usually equipped with GPS-embedded
terminals, victims may simply own a mobile phone or a smart
phone. In [91], a challenging issue is addressed: gathering
the information concerning victims without relying on
their active involvement in the localization procedure.
C. Management of Positioning (and Other Types of) Data
A lot of effort has also been spent in studying ways for
electronically tagging rescue workers, materials, and victims, and for saving associated relevant information (e.g.,
position and status) in databases [33], [34]. Today this is
still performed manually and mostly on paper, e.g.,
through internationally accepted procedures like Btriage.[
Triage consists in prioritizing injured and affected persons
based on the severity of their condition, in order to
significantly improve the efficiency of rescue operations.
Fig. 11. Gross amount of transmitted data needed to synchronize
remote databases over satellite for three different database
synchronization algorithms (CPISync, Maatkit, and Slow Sync).
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With these new systems, victims and rescuers’ data can be
easily gathered, aggregated, stored, and distributed. The
underlying databases have to cope with a variety of different
network technologies, including terrestrial wireless and
satellite, and with a network topology which might change
at any time. So a key problem is to reliably and efficiently
synchronize a set of distributed databases.
Studies have been recently performed to analyze some
database synchronization algorithms and the performance
of selected synchronization solutions, namely Slow Sync,
Maatkit, and Partitioned-CPISync [92], in order to find a
suitable solution to synchronize databases containing
emergency-related data (e.g., triage) over satellite links.
The main parameter of interest is the number of exchanged messages, i.e., the Btalkativeness[ of the protocol
with respect to the real differences between the databases.
In fact, in contrast to normal file transfer, the time needed
to synchronize different database nodes via satellites is not
only driven by the available data rate, but mainly influenced by the long round-trip time delay and thus by the
talkativeness of the mechanism identifying the differences.
The algorithm CPISync [92] has revealed to be the best
candidate for this purpose. Fig. 11 shows, for different
algorithms, the gross amount of data, transmitted to synchronize two databases, as a function of the real differREFERENCES
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VI I. CONCLUSION
Throughout this paper, the existing and future architectural approaches for the provision of emergency communications services using space-based infrastructures have
been revised; challenges and expected trends and developments for user terminals have been highlighted. The
benefits stemming from hybrid approaches using combinations of terrestrial and satellite/HAPs have been presented
in the context of cooperative strategies both at physical and
at networking layers; convergence at service level between
communications and positioning-based applications has
also been addressed. h
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank E. Lutz, A. Donner,
H. Brandt, and F. Rossetto for the material and the information provided during preparation of this paper.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Matteo Berioli (Member, IEEE) was born in
Perugia, Italy, in August 1976. He received a
Laurea degree (M.S.) in electronic engineering
and the Ph.D. degree in information engineering
from the University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy, both
with honors, in 2001 and 2005, respectively.
Since 2002, he has been with the German
Aerospace Center (DLR), where since 2008 he has
been leading the Networking and Protocols Group
of the Digital Networks Department in the Institute
of Communications and Navigation. His main research activities are in the
area of IP-based satellite networks; key research issues include quality of
service (QoS) and protocol analysis, cross-layer techniques, header
compression, and packet-layer coding. Since 2006 he also has been
working as expert for the European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (ETSI) in the area of broadband satellite multimedia; from 2006
to 2008, he was the first chairman of the satellite working group of the
Public Safety Communications Europe Forum (PSCE Forum). He is
author/coauthor of more than 50 papers that appeared in international
journals and conference proceedings.
Antonella Molinaro (Member, IEEE) received a
Laurea degree (M.S.) in computer engineering
from the University of Calabria, Cosenza, Italy, in
1991, a post-Laurea degree in information technology from CEFRIEL (ICT Center of Excellence For
Research, Innovation, Education and industrial
Labs partnership), Milano, Italy, in 1992, and the
Ph.D. degree in multimedia technologies and communications systems from University of Calabria
in 1996.
She joined Telesoft S.p.A., Rome, as a Telecommunication Network
Designer (1992–1993), and the Mobile Network Division Research Center
of Siemens, Munich, Germany, as a Commission of European Communities Fellow for the Research into Advanced Communications in Europe
(RACE II) mobility action in Advanced-TDMA Mobile Access (ATDMA)
project (1994–1995). She was recipient of a research contract from
Polytechnic of Milano and worked in cooperation with Centro Studi e
Laboratori Telecomunicazioni (CSELT), Torino, Italy, in 1997. She was an
Assistant Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Messina
(1998–2001) and the University of Calabria (2001–2004). She qualified as
an Associate Professor in 2003 and has been with University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy, since 2005. She has
coauthored more than 180 papers. Her research interests include
satellite and mobile radio networks, vehicular networks, and future
Internet architectures.
Prof. Molinaro is a member of the Integral Satcom Initiative (ISI),
European Technology Platform on Satellite Communications. She acted
as a Co-Guest Editor for IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, special issues on
QoS in Next-Generation Wireless Multimedia Communications Systems
(2003) and on The Synergy of Space and Terrestrial Communications in
Next-Generation Hybrid Wireless Systems (2005). She was recipient of
two Best Paper Awards for research in the field of satellite and vehicular
communications.
Vol. 99, No. 11, November 2011 | Proceedings of the IEEE
1937
Berioli et al.: Aerospace Communications for Emergency Applications
Simone Morosi (Member, IEEE) was born in
Firenze, Italy, in 1968. He received the Dr.Ing.
degree in electronics engineering and the Ph.D.
degree in information and telecommunication engineering from the University of Firenze, Firenze,
Italy, in 1996 and 2000, respectively.
Since 1999, he has been a Researcher at the
Italian Interuniversity Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT). Since 2000, he has been with the
Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, University of Firenze. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor. His
present research interests involve communication systems for emergency applications and future wireless communication systems. He
participated in the European Network of Excellence NEXWAY (Network of
EXcellence in Wireless Application and technology). He is currently
participating in the European Networks of Excellence NEWCOM (Network
of Excellence in Wireless COMmunications) and CRUISE (CReating
Ubiquitos Intelligent Sensing Environments).
1938
Sandro Scalise (Senior Member, IEEE) was born in
Utrecht, Holland, in April 1973. He graduated in
electronic engineering specializing in telecommunications (with honors) from the University of
Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy, in July 1999 and received
the Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) from the
University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain, in 2007.
Since 2001, he has been with the Institute for
Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Wessling, Germany, where,
from October 2004 to June 2008, he led the Mobile Satellite Systems
Group. Since July 2008, he has been leading the Digital Networks Department, bearing the responsibility for SatCom R&D within DLR Institute
of Communications and Navigation. His own research activity deals with
forward error correction, land mobile satellite channel modeling, and
satellite link design and performance evaluation. He has been involved in
several national and international projects in the area of mobile satellite
communications. He is coauthor of more than 60 international publications, including more than ten journal papers. He was editor of a chapter
devoted to satellite channel impairments in the framework of the book
Digital Satellite Communications (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2007).
Since June 2006, he has been leading the R&D Working Group of the ISI
European Technology Platform.
Dr. Scalise cochaired the last three editions of the Advanced Satellite
Multimedia Systems (ASMS) conference in 2006, 2008, and 2010 and will
also cochair the next edition in 2012.
Proceedings of the IEEE | Vol. 99, No. 11, November 2011
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