Modeling Unreliable Operation of mmWave-Based Data Sessions in Mission-Critical PPDR Services

Public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) situations are becoming increasingly common due to the rapid urbanization of our society. Among these, harsh weather conditions and harmful human activity create challenges for reliable operation of mobile communication infrastructures, which calls for immediate action. The wireless networks of today may not be ready to accommodate emergency scenarios as they have not been optimized for PPDR contexts historically. In this paper, we first review the important use cases, challenges, and requirements in the context of next-generation mobile networking for PPDR applications. We argue that many emerging services may be supported by the novel communication technology operating in millimeter-wave spectrum. Against this background, we contribute a new analytical model to characterize session continuity and other service-level performance indicators in cases when the communication system is susceptible to sudden intermissions caused by emergency situations. © 2013 IEEE.