Nationwide Safety: Nationwide Modeling for Broadband Network Services

As governments plan nationwide, interoperable broadband networks for their public safety services, the challenge arises of determining how and where to invest limited resources to meet demanding requirements. The United States is in the early stages of planning a nationwide 700-MHz long-term evolution (LTE) network for use by public safety officials at the local, state, and federal levels. This article presents a framework for the modeling and planning of a public safety broadband network on a nationwide scale. This framework addresses the challenges of modeling and planning for a country that is diverse in terms of terrain, user density, and public safety needs. It does so while managing computational complexity so that alternate scenarios (e.g., target areas, user requirements, and site assumptions) can be readily assessed in a timely fashion. The approach utilizes a clustering algorithm to classify areas by their terrain characteristics and user population, an iterative process for sampling and analyzing areas within each cluster, and extrapolation of the results to generate nationwide statistics such as site count, coverage percentage, and network load. Examples are given that illustrate the implications of stringent coverage reliability requirements as well as the impact of high traffic density resulting from an incident response.