Performance evaluation of mission critical communications services over LTE networks

Today, Mission Critical Communications (MCC) users are classically equipped with narrowband and wideband technologies which frequently are not sufficient for high data rate applications in many mission critical situations. The need for radio capacity is increasing daily during major incidents and accident scenes. Therefore, there is need for broadband systems that support high data demanding services. Long Term Evolution (LTE) for mobile broadband MCC communications has been accepted as the technology appropriate for future mission critical communications. However, delivering a MCC mobile broadband capability involves designing it to meet specific network capacity and quality of service requirements. This research presents performance evaluation of LTE-based MCC systems in terms of the average waiting time, throughput and resource utilization. The results show number of simultaneous video traffic and high data applications that can be supported in an eNode B for LTE — based MCC network. These results would help the network designers in the dimensioning and planning of MCC over LTE networks.