QoS performance evaluation of multimedia services in emergency networks

This work describes the main communication services that have to be provided by any emergency network, together with their bandwidth and network requirements. One of them is voice over IP (VoIP), which is fundamental to coordinate all the necessary rescue operations during a disaster event. However, this service alone is not sufficient for the current needs of any modern (or future) public safety system. Indeed, it has to be accompanied by other important services, like video over IP (VIP) to film the incident area, the transmission of sensor data (e.g., temperature, heartbeat, etc.), and generic file transfer service. In order to design a modern and efficient emergency communication network able to support all of these applications, the first step will be the analysis of the theoretical bandwidth requirements of each network segment. Besides, we will show numerical results, obtained by means of computer simulations, in order to demonstrate that the considered services can be supported, in a reference network architecture, guaranteeing a satisfactory QoS.