Enhancing TETRA with capabilities exploiting MIPv6 and IEEE 802.21 MIH services

The private mobile radios (PMRs) play a key role in public safety, emergency and rescue missions, patrolling and military operations, allowing the fast deployment of robust and effective communication networks able to cover a wide area of interest. Unfortunately, they do not offer high performance in terms of throughput and QoS if compared with well-established and emerging wireless technologies such as WiFi, IEEE 802.11s, LTE, WiMaX, etc. Since modern terminals are equipped with multiple wireless interfaces it is reasonable to suppose a close cooperation among PMRs and the above mentioned networks, according to the concept of Always Best Connected (ABC) paradigm, that is in a multiple access technology scenarios it is desirable that the mobile node be always connected through the access technology which best fulfill user and network needs. Moving from this idea, we explore the possibility of extending the capabilities of a well known PMR, i.e. TETRA, by exploiting Mobile IPv6 and IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover services.