Performance of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Services During Hazards of National Significance

Disasters can cause extraordinary public demand for communications services. Services supporting National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) and public safety personnel must perform with minimal degradation during such events. This is provided by priority treatment mechanisms developed by carriers for the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC). DHS OEC uses modeling and simulation analyses to predict the ability of NS/EP users to communicate during network congestion, and also to understand service performance anticipated for these users during events such as the National Planning Scenarios [1]. This paper describes simulation analyses used to identify projected congestion in Fourth Generation (4G) Long-term Evolution (LTE) networks and the ability of NS/EP users to communicate during these significant events. Analysis results indicate certain priority treatments over the LTE air interface can greatly improve the call completion probability for priority calls in these scenarios, depending on the configuration of these mechanisms. Depending on the type of disaster event, certain entities in the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) network can also become congested. This analysis was performed to direct efforts for future priority mechanism development, as well as providing guidance for recommended configurations for current priority mechanisms.