,(((,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQIHUHQFHRQ$GYDQFHG1HWZRUNVDQG7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV6\VWHPV$176
Two-Tier Architecture for Heterogeneous Public
Safety Wireless Networks
2020 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems (ANTS) | 978-1-7281-9290-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ANTS50601.2020.9342824
Pimmy Gandotra
Bharti School of Telecom and Mgmt, Dept of Electrical Engineering
Dept of Computer Scienct Indian Institute of Technology, Indore
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
New Delhi, India
pimmy.gandotra@gmail.com
Abstract—Device-to-device (D2D) communication and
Heterogenous networks (HetNet) in wireless communication
networks (WCNs) are known to enhance system capacity,
coverage and energy efficiency. A key area where these can
improve the overall performance during partial and complete
infrastructure unavailability, and ensure coverage, along with
essential information broadcasting is the public safety
communication systems. Looking for an appropriate
architectural solution for the 5G WCNs and beyond, during an
emergency, this paper proposes a two-tier architecture for
achieving guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Under
appropriate availability from the macro base station (BS),
public-safety users are serviced by it directly, which forms Tier
1. However, under the situation of loss of infrastructure and/or
for offloading public-safety traffic from the macro BS, the
public-safety users are serviced by the Tier 2 elements, i.e
small cell BSs and D2D links. As far as possible, use of D2D or
cooperative communication is braced, as it provides higher
system throughput. Also, D2D supports much lower power
consumption, thereby making it more suitable during
emergency situations where users may not be able to recharge
handsets frequently.
Keywords—Public Safety, D2D, HetNet,
communication, broadcast
I. INTRODUCTION
The modern wireless communication networks (WCNs)
demand high reliability, low latency, large bandwidths and
cost-effectiveness. New platforms are being introduced for
socialization and entertainment which further take these
demands into account. Amidst the rising emergency
situations across the globe, research on mission critical
systems are also on the rise. For instance, the COVID-19
pandemic, Beirut explosion, Mauritius oil spill, floods
during the monsoons, and the like. Under such critical
situations, the WCN infrastructures have ability to fetch
real-time information to the central control agencies. This
can aid establishment of effective communication during an
emergency.
In the next generation WCNs, there is an expectation of
real-time video streaming from emergency site to the rescue
and responding agencies [11]. Even multimedia and files
can be shared, thereby facilitating time-sensitive operations.
Upon successful reception of the necessary information
from the emergency site, the role of public warning systems
comes into picture. These systems essentially target reliable
communication during emergencies. Sending periodic alerts
XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE
k,(((
Authorized licensed use limited to: ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on May 18,2021 at 10:08:46 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Vimal Bhatia Brejesh Lal
Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Indore, MP, India New Delhi, India
vbhatia@iiti.ac.in brejesh@ee.iitd.ac.in
and updates, along with necessary communication set up
remains a key responsibility. Their role becomes crucial
under the situations of loss of infrastructure for
communication establishment.
Device-to-device (D2D) communication has an
indispensable role to play in the Public warning systems in
5G and beyond WCNs. Using the operable devices in the
network to ensure connectivity as far as possible during an
emergency is an intelligent step. This allows essential
information exchange without the need for an infrastructure,
thereby resulting in being a cost-effective solution during
emergency. The scenario depicted in Fig. 1 shows
emergency situations with D2D communication and HetNet
support. During an emergency, D2D links have a concrete
contribution in effective information dissemination,
enhancing coverage and supporting rescue operations. It
reduces the excessive load on the base station (BS) and
successfully utilizes the available resources in the network,
proving to be a resource-efficient 5G technology. Other
benefits include high energy efficiency, lesser latencies and
green increased throughputs. Partial or complete WCN failure
during emergencies can cause abundant loss to human life,
as a result of delayed relief responses. D2D communication
can make up for such delays effectively. The inclusion of
D2D to heterogeneous networks aids further improvements
in the network performance parameters, while appropriately
achieving the target quality of service (QoS) [1], [14].
As loss of power/energy during emergency situations
limit the information transmission during the emergency
situations, energy-efficient communication is an important
concern for the public safety networks. Energy harvesting
(EH) has been identified as a capable solution for powering
of the devices. An outstanding choice for information
transmission is the RF energy [2], and the same can be used
for EH. The RF circuitry has been using Simultaneous
wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) [10] for
simultaneous transmission of data and information. Time and
power splitting have been used in SWIPT for assuring the
information availability, as has been discussed in [3].
Connotating SWIPT in disaster management can be
rewarding for the 5G WCNs and beyond.
This paper proposes an architecture for public warning
systems considering the Heterogenous networks (HetNet) in
5G and beyond WCNs. The HetNet feature in the network
 ,(((,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQIHUHQFHRQ$GYDQFHG1HWZRUNVDQG7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV6\VWHPV$176
Macro BS
Users serviced
during
infrastructure
Pandemic
loss, by mobile information
relay station broadcasting
Small cell
Fire Department
Fig. 1. Public Safety Communication Scenario with D2D Communication
offloads traffic to small cells and the D2D links in the
network, thereby improving system throughput, coverage
and power consumption.
A. Organization of the Paper
Introducing the importance of HetNets, especially D2D
communication in Public safety networks, some related
literary works are stated in Section II. The proposed
architecture is elaborated in Section III, along with the
system model and power consumption model. Possible
outcomes for different performance evaluators are discussed
in Section IV, with paper eventually concluding in Section
V.
II. RELATED WORK
Literature review suggests to provide appropriate
solutions to the users that are buoyant for the emergency
situation. Social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram
have enabled features for checking the safety of their users
[4]. Researchers have presented a brief overview of the
emergency applications using D2D communication in [5].
Extending the coverage for serving the out of coverage users
and ensuring safety are the main issues addressed. As
emergency situations are not predictable, the authors in [6]
propose a relay-based mechanism for D2D communication,
facilitating an adaptive architecture during emergencies.
Grouping procedures are introduced for simpler and fast
device discovery and offloading in the network.
Considering the power limitations of the devices, the
authors in [7] proposed a messaging solution in D2D
networks. The problem of limited power has also been taken
into consideration, to prolong the battery of the D2D
devices. Default mechanisms for messaging use random
access channel (RACH) which is contention based and
consumes more power. The proposed scheme however
support messaging via broadcast signals from the BS, to
Authorized licensed use limited to: ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on May 18,2021 at 10:08:46 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

Multi-hop
transmission
D2D Link
Fire Site
Hotspot signal
detection and user
rescue
which users in need respond and are subsequently serviced
at lower power levels.
A hierarchical architecture with D2D communication has
been proposed in [8] where the communication with a cloud
head is controlled by a central software-defined networking
(SDN) controller. Energy levels are controlled by limiting
the connection establishment links to the Long term
evolution (LTE) network, via the central controller.
Inclusion of local and central controllers, in the cloud and
core, respectively, along with multi-hop routing protocols in
the network, support communication during emergencies.
Using the multipath routing, load balancing based
selective adhoc on-demand multipath distance vector (LBS-
AOMDV) scheme is proposed in [1], for public safety
communication in heterogenous networks including D2D
communication. The scheme of load-balancing increases the
network throughput.
Given these literary schemes, and looking into the
development of intelligent systems in the WCNs nowadays,
this paper proposes a Heterogenous network architecture
with a two-layer structure, for ensuring public safety. The
first layer involves serving users by the macro BS, while the
second layer services users using small cells and D2D
communication. Small cells provide coverage in critical
areas under the situations of infrastructure damage or
unavailability. The proposed scheme is seen to provide better
performance in terms of power consumption and throughput.
III. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
Under the emergency situations, it is mandatory that the
system architectures be robust and highly reliable which
ensures running of the network services. In such network
architectures, ensuring connectivity is essential, while
bandwidth requirements are not very severe. The architecture
proposed in this paper focuses on the use of HetNet for
ensuring connectivity and coverage to the users in an
emergency situation. The proposed architecture considers
two tiers, where Tier-1 involves servicing of users by the
 ,(((,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQIHUHQFHRQ$GYDQFHG1HWZRUNVDQG7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV6\VWHPV$176

Macro BS serviced users

Small cell BS serviced users

D2D users

Pt,m I : Number of Public Safety Users

Macro BS

Tier 1

Pt,m

Small Cell BS
Tier 2

D2D Links
Pt,m
Tier 2

Fig. 2. Proposed HetNet Architecture for Public Safety Communication

macro BS (MBS), while Tier-2 involves small cell BS (SBS) resources with and denotes the corresponding
operation, or D2D link formation, as is depicted in Fig. 2.
interference channel gain. Also, denotes the channel
Offloading of the servicing of users in an emergency
situation to the small cells, and D2D links will enhance the coefficient for self-interference, and denotes the
Quality of service (QoS) provisions in the WCN. residual power. These are denoted as
(2)
A. System Model
(3)
Looking into the set-up of the two-layer architecture, the
placement of small cells can be either fixed, or deployable. Equations depict that SINRs depend on the channel gain
Considering a single cell scenario with the macro BS at the values, and the power levels. For a MBS operation, the path
cell center, with I public safety users, and J non-public loss will be higher than that for a SBS, and much higher for
safety users, it is essential that the public safety users D2D operation. This is because ,
efficiently meet the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio
where denotes the distance between the transmitter
(SINR) threshold levels.
from to the users in .
1) Channel Model
As a result,
For a set of public safety users, being
serviced by macro BS, small cell BS or D2D links, defined (4)
in the set , with BS denoting macro BS
operation, SBS denoting small cell BS and D denoting D2D Thus, apart from ensuring coverage to users in an
emergency situation, D2D communication and small cells in
link. The SINR of the signal received at the user, upon
a heterogenous network also are capable of improving the
being serviced by transmitter from is given by SINR. Thus, the QoS requirements of the network can be
(1) effectively met.

2) Power Consumption Model and Optimization

Here, denotes the transmitter power of sender to Strategy
the user, , , is the Additive
Open-loop power transfer is practiced for power
White Gaussian noise (AWGN) power, denotes the optimization at user devices, during the emergency
transmission power of the interferer, which shares situations. The open-loop power is investigated on the basis

Authorized licensed use limited to: ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on May 18,2021 at 10:08:46 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ,(((,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQIHUHQFHRQ$GYDQFHG1HWZRUNVDQG7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV6\VWHPV$176
of the target SINR and the pathloss incurred by the devices.
It is given as
(5)
where is the target SINR controlling parameter,
expressed as summation of cell and user-specific parameters,
is the pathloss factor and denotes the path-loss. The
users at the emergency site, with limited terminal power, can
be detected the power headroom report [9]. On the basis of
this report, power levels are switched to within the
network. Such an approach ensures an optimal power
availability to all users in the network, along with the
necessary QoS guarantees
IV. OUTCOMES AND DISCUSSIONS
As the proposed scheme targets higher throughput and
lower power consumption levels, this evaluates the depiction
of results for the same. Fig. 3 depicts the SINR values for the
three transmissions considered, i.e. MBS, SBS and D2D
communication. Due to least pathloss associated with D2D
link formations, the achieved SINRs with D2D
communication remains maximum, and beyond the threshold
values as far as possible. In comparison to the D2D
communication, path loss experienced by the users being
serviced by the small cell BSs is higher. This results in lesser
gains, and thus lower SINR values. The SINR values can
degrade below the threshold values, for users farther from
the small cell BS. The macro BS servicing the largest radii
results in maximum path loss occurrence at the users. thus,
SINRs
D2D Links
Small Cell Base Station
Macro BS
SINR
SINRth
Distance from Base Station
Fig. 3. Comparison of SINRs from the MBS, SBS and D2D links
achieved are very less. Though their transmission powers are
the reverse order, i.e.
(6)
yet, the SINR with the macro BS is least due to the high
interference scenarios being prevalent in the 5G ultra-dense
networks.
A comparison of the power consumption levels for the
macro BS, small cell BS and D2D communication is
depicted in Fig. 4. As is illustrated, D2D communication, due
to the short distance transmission, involves the least power
consumption, in comparison to the small cell BS and macro
Authorized licensed use limited to: ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on May 18,2021 at 10:08:46 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

BS. The power consumption levels of the individual users
differ, depending on their distances from the transmitter, and
their time of operation.
Macro BS
Small Cell BS
D2D Communication
Power Consumption
User User User
1 2 I
Public Safety Users
Fig. 4. Power consumption levels for the different transmission sources
(macro BS, SBS and D2D links)
Such a servicing of users can be useful in establishing
communication among the users, as well as broadcasting the
essential content to them. These shall accelerate the rescue
processes and help the public safety users stay updated about
the emergency.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a two-tier architecture, promoting the
HetNet functionality in public safety communications. The
use of different tiers for servicing the public safety users
introduce robustness into the public safety architecture
proposed. Even in the Tier 2, with SBS and D2D operation,
the D2D communication remains the primary choice. This is
because of the assured QoS guarantees with the D2D
communication. Tier 1 remains the MBS operation. The
expected trends in the performance indicators are also
interpreted, in conformance with the proposed architecture.
Operation of small cells in mmWave bands in a HetNet
architecture can help in improving the system performance
further [12]. Additional improvements can be achieved via
inclusion of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) [13],
[15].
REFERENCES
[1] Tata, Chafika, and Michel Kadoch. "Multipath routing algorithm for
device-to-device communications for public safety over LTE
heterogeneous networks." 1st International Conference on
Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster
Management (ICT-DM). IEEE, 2014.
[2] Ali, Kamran, et al. "Disaster management using D2D communication
with power transfer and clustering techniques.", IEEE Access, vol. 6,
pp. 14643-14654, 2018.
[3] X. Zhou, R. Zhang, and C. K. Ho, “Wireless information and power
transfer: architecture design and rate-energy tradeoff," IEEE Trans.
Commun., vol. 61, no. 11, pp. 4754-4767, Nov. 2013.
[4] Safety Check.âA I https://www.facebook.com/about/safetycheck/,
2016.
[5] Alnoman, Ali, and Alagan Anpalagan. "On D2D communications for
public safety applications." IEEE Canada International Humanitarian
Technology Conference (IHTC), 2017.
 ,(((,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQIHUHQFHRQ$GYDQFHG1HWZRUNVDQG7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV6\VWHPV$176
[6] Ali, Kamran, et al. "Energy efficient and scalable D2D architecture
design for public safety network." IEEE International Conference on
Advanced Communication Systems and Information Security
(ACOSIS), 2016.
[7] Hunukumbure, Mythri, et al. "D2D for energy efficient
communications in disaster and emergency situations." IEEE 21st
International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and
Computer Networks-(SoftCOM 2013), 2013.
[8] Usman, Muhammad, et al. "A software-defined device-to-device
communication architecture for public safety applications in 5G
networks." IEEE Access, vol. 3, pp. 1649-1654, 2015.
[9] W. Kim, Z. Kaleem, and K. Chang, ‘‘Power headroom report-based
uplink power control in 3GPP LTE-A HetNet,’’ EURASIP J. Wireless
Commun. Netw., vol. 2015, no. 1, pp. 1---13, 2015.
[10] Parvez, Shaik, Deepak Kumar, and Vimal Bhatia. "On Performance
of SWIPT Enabled Two-Way Relay System with Non-Linear Power
Amplifier." IEEE National Conference on Communications (NCC),
2020.
Authorized licensed use limited to: ACCRA TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on May 18,2021 at 10:08:46 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

[11] Zhang, Qingyang, et al. "Distributed collaborative execution on the
edges and its application to amber alerts." IEEE Internet of Things
Journal, vol. 5, no.5, pp. 3580-3593, 2018.
[12] Swami, Pragya, et al. "Performance analysis of noma enabled hybrid
network with limited feedback." IEEE Transactions on Vehicular
Technology, vol. 69, no.4, pp. 4516-4521, 2020.
[13] Swami, Pragya, et al. "A cooperation scheme for user fairness and
performance enhancement in NOMA-HCN." IEEE Transactions on
Vehicular Technology, vol. 67, no.12, pp. 11965-11978, 2018.
[14] Swami, Pragya, et al. "On user offloading in NOMA-HetNet using
repulsive point process." IEEE Systems Journal,vol. 13, no.2, pp.
1409-1420, 2018.
[15] Swami, Pragya, et al. "User fairness and performance enhancement
for cell edge user in NOMA-HCN with offloading." IEEE 85th
Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), 2017.