Final_presentation-Ali

Emergency and Critical Wireless Communication System

An example for a public safety network

Portable and mobile radios (LMRS) for PS communication

10.1109/SECON.2015.7132951

Emergency Scenarios

In emergency scenarios, (e.g., terrorist attacks, earthquakes, flood), the availability of a core network or base station (BS) cannot be guaranteed; it is often unavailable due to e.g. physical damages, and thus people are not able to communicate with FRs.

A taxonomy of disaster types

Main Challenge for First Responders

Existing PSNs (LMRS) are not best suited for search and rescues operations.

The main challenges for FRs in such scenarios:

• Provide reliable connectivity

• Get up-to-dated information from

the disaster zone

• Maintain the network connectivity

alive for several hours

Technical challenges for FRs during emergency scenarios.

Why D2D Communication for PSN?

D2D can play significant role to design future PSNs. D2D enables direct communication between two-user equipment (UEs) with or without the involvement of a base station.

D2D Enabling Technologies:

• Bluetooth
• Wifi-Direct
• ZigBee
• 3GPP-based Sidelink

Visualization of the D2D communications in three different scenarios

Overview: The evolution of D2D communication in 3GPP 1/3

Overview: Proximity Services (ProSe) 2/3

ProSe enables D2D communication between UEs, with and without assistance of Base Station. Two main services are provided:

• Direct Discovery
• Direct Communication

Two models for Direct Discovery :

• Model A ("I am here")
• Model B ("who is there?" / "are you there?")

Overview: Proximity Services (ProSe) 3/3

Direct Discovery with Model A

Direct Discovery with Model B

Overall procedure for the ProSe direct discovery

PC5 interface discovery messages for model A and model B

Research Motivation and Challenge

Motivation

Provide basic information to first responders in emergency scenarios to speedup the rescues process and reduce the response time.

Challenge

• CHAL-1: Establish a connectivity in the absence of a BS
• CHAL-2: Provide a reliable communication
• CHAL-3: Share up-to-date important information with the first responders
• CHAL-4: locate affected people inside the emergency zone
• CHAL-5: Maintain the network connectivity alive for several hours

Research Questions

• RQ-1: How to develop a real-time D2D communication system when the base stations are not available and what are the suitable parameters to obtain reliable connectivity and maximum range in such emergency scenarios?

• RQ-2: How to avoid redundant transmissions and optimize the D2D communication to improve the lifetime of the network significantly without compromising the reliable transmission of critical information?

• RQ-3: How to implement an autonomous, energy-efficient, context-aware and intelligent PSN to provide up-to-date critical information in a few minutes (as a response time) to first responders in emergency scenarios, and demonstrate it in a real life scenario?

Research Path

Research Path

RQ-1: Contributions (Building up the Experimental Setup)

Experimental setup consists of the following equipment:

• USRP B210 board
• GPSDO module
• Telescopic antennas
• Mini PC

Photos of a UE

Components and architecture for the Direct Discovery

RQ-1: Contributions (Building up the Experimental Setup)

Preliminary Experimental Setup

Research Path

RQ-1: Contributions (Measurement Campaign)

UEs perform ProSe direct discovery in an indoor LoS transmission path (corridor)

UEs perform direct discovery in an indoor NLoS transmission path (laboratories)

UEs perform direct discovery in an outdoor LoS transmission path (rooftop)

RQ-1: Results

Impact of the carrier frequency on the direct discovery in an indoor NLOS scenario

The effect of Tx and Rx gains on the direct discovery in an indoor NLOS scenario

RQ-1: Results

SNR as a function of Tx gain (X-axis) and Tx power of SLSS signals and PSDCH channel.

Direct discovery ratio as a function of SNR.

RQ-1: Results

The impact of distance on the discovery in all three scenario

Impact of increasing the number of UEs on direct discovery in the indoor-NLOS scenario

Research Path

RQ-2: Contributions (Proposed Approach)

Context-Aware Energy-Efficient Proposed Heuristic Approach

RQ-2: Results

Impact on the discovery ratio in the indoor-NLoS scenario with a fixed numbers of messages per second.

Comparison of the number of re-transmissions between our proposed approach (with response message) and fixed numbers of messages per second.

Research Path

RQ-3: Contributions (Cooperative D2D Communication System: A Prototype)

Suggested architecture for UAV and D2D communication assisted public safety network for emergency scenarios wherein cellular BS are non-functional. The ProSe enabled UEs are able to communicate with the deployed command centre via the multi-hop sidelink connectivity over UAVs

RQ-3: Contributions (Cooperative D2D Communication System: A Prototype)

The discovery payload contains information about user ID and current location

RQ-3: Contributions (Cooperative D2D Communication System: A Prototype)

High-level process flow diagram of the implemented prototype. The green boxes depict the implemented context-aware and self-aware intelligent algorithm for minimizing energy consumption while maintaining the necessary information transmission.

RQ-3: Results

RQ-3: Results (A video demo in the lab environment)

RQ-3: Results (Deployment in real-life scenario)

The external deployed Command Center

 Deployed UAVs in the outdoor environment

Deployed a Ground UE in the indoor environment

RQ-3: Results (A video demo in the real-life scenario)

RQ-3: Results

Data received at the deployed Command Centre

The average time (end-to-end delay) to discover the UE in PS scenarios as a function of number of hops.

RQ-3: Results

Direct discovery in UAV-to-UE scenario

The impact on the direct discovery due to the position of UAV in UAV-to-UE scenario

Conclusion

The reliability of direct discovery is a function of

• Carrier frequency
• Altitude and distance between transmitting and receiving UE
• Transmission power of SLSS signals and PSDCH channel
• Transmitter and receiver amplifcation gains
• Signal-to-noise ratio
• Number of UEs in a group

Context-aware energy-efficient proposed approach for D2D communication in emergency scenarios

• A fixed number of discovery transmission is not a reliable solution
• The periodicity for discovery transmissions should be according to the current battery level of a UE
• Transmission of a discovery should be decided by UE based on its mobility

Research perspectives

• Adaptive transmission power: For out-of-coverage scenarios, the UEs use preconfigured values for transmission power. It is important for the UE to adapt the transmission power according to channel conditions, which will conserve energy and improve the battery life of a UE.

• Interference management: Interference is the main reason for performance degradation in D2D networks. Dynamic algorithm is needed to avoid adjacent channel and inter-channel interference, and intra-cell and inter-cell interference, which could provide better communication links for both cellular and D2D users.

• Indoor positioning: PS provides accurate positioning for outdoor scenarios, but this is not a reliable solution for indoor positioning. For accurate indoor positioning in D2D networks, different localization techniques (time of arrival, time difference of arrival, time of flight, etc.) based on e.g. ultra wide band (UWB) technology can be investigated as a future direction.

• Compatibility in heterogeneous network: In 5G and beyond, devices can use different protocols (e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sidelink, etc.) to perform D2D communications. Exploiting such diversity remains an open issue to provide fully reliable D2D communication links between devices in a heterogeneous network

My Publications

1- Ali Masood, Navuday Sharma, M Mahtab Alam, Yannick Le Moullec, Davide Scazzoli, Luca Reggiani, Maurizio Magarini, and Rizwan Ahmad. Device-to-device discovery and localization assisted by UAVs in pervasive public safety networks. In Proceedings of the ACM MobiHoc workshop on innovative aerial communication solutions for FIrst REsponders network in emergency scenarios, pages 6–11, 2019. (ETIS 3.1, Conference Paper, Published)

2- Ali Masood, Davide Scazzoli, Navuday Sharma, Yannick Le Moullec, Rizwan Ahmad, Luca Reggiani, Maurizio Magarini, and Muhammad Mahtab Alam. Surveying pervasive public safety communication technologies in the context of terrorist attacks. Physical Communication, 41:101109, 2020. (ETIS 1.1, Journal Paper, Published).

3- Ali Masood, Muhammad Mahtab Alam, and Yannick Le Moullec. Experimental characterization of ProSe direct discovery for emergency scenarios. In 2021 IEEE 7th World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT), pages 891–896. IEEE, 2021. (ETIS 3.1, Conference Paper, Published)

4- Ali Masood, Muhammad Mahtab Alam, Yannick Le Moullec, Luca Reggiani, Davide Scazzoli, Maurizio Magarini, and Rizwan Ahmad. ProSe direct discovery: experimental characterization and context-aware heuristic approach to extend public safety networks lifetime. IEEE Access, 9:130055–130071, 2021. (ETIS 1.1, Journal Paper, Published).

5- Ali Masood, Muhammad Mahtab Alam, and Yannick Le Moullec. Direct Discoverybased Cooperative Device-to-Device Communication for Emergency Scenarios in 6G. In 2022 European Conference on Networks (EuCNC) and Communications 6G Summit. IEEE, 2022. (ETIS 3.1, Conference Paper, Published)