Deployable Networks for Public Safety in 5G and Beyond: A Coverage and Interference Study

Deployable networks are foreseen to be one of the key technologies for public safety in fifth generation (5G) mobile communications and beyond. They can be used to complement the existing public cellular networks to provide temporary and on-demand connectivity in emergency situations. However, operating deployable networks in coexistence with public cellular networks can be challenging from an interference perspective. To gain insights on the deployment strategy for deployable networks, in this article, we present an extensive numerical study of coverage and interference analysis, considering four different co-existence scenarios and different types of deployable base stations (BSs), i.e., BS on a truck and BS on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Our simulation results show that deploying deployable BSs in rural scenarios can provide good coverage to meet the service requirement for mission critical (MC) users. In addition, the interference impact is only substantial when the deployable and public networks are close to each other. Finally, allowing the MC users to access the public network can be of vital importance to guarantee their service when the interference level between public and deployable network is very high.