UAV-Empowered Disaster-Resilient Edge Architecture for Delay-Sensitive Communication

TL;DR

This paper proposes a disaster-resilient, UAV-enabled edge architecture for public safety LTE, combining SDN and edge computing to improve delay performance during emergencies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel three-layered architecture integrating UAV cloudlets, SDN, and radio access for enhanced disaster resilience in public safety LTE networks.

Findings

Delay reduced by 20% with the proposed architecture

Flexible architecture combining SDN and edge computing

Supports various public safety LTE services effectively

Abstract

The fifth-generation (5G) communication systems will enable enhanced mobile broadband, ultra-reliable low latency, and massive connectivity services. The broadband and low-latency services are indispensable to public safety (PS) communication during natural or man-made disasters. Recently, the third generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPPLTE) has emerged as a promising candidate to enable broadband PS communications. In this article, first we present six major PS-LTE enabling services and the current status of PS-LTE in 3GPP releases. Then, we discuss the spectrum bands allocated for PS-LTE in major countries by international telecommunication union (ITU). Finally, we propose a disaster resilient three-layered architecture for PS-LTE (DR-PSLTE). This architecture consists of a software-defined network (SDN) layer to provide centralized control, an unmanned air vehicle (UAV) cloudlet layer to facilitate edge computing or to enable emergency communication link, and a radio access layer. The proposed architecture is flexible and combines the benefits of SDNs and edge computing to efficiently meet the delay requirements of various PS-LTE services. Numerical results verified that under the proposed DR-PSLTE architecture, delay is reduced by 20% as compared with the conventional centralized computing architecture.