Public Safety and Emergency Case Communications: Opportunities from the Aspect of Cognitive Radio

Recent developments in wireless communications systems and the introduction of new technologies such as cognitive radios are expected to bring beneficial methodologies and solutions to the problems of public safety and emergency case communications, especially related to interoperability issues. Physical layer adaptiveness and spectrum sensing methodology of cognitive radios are commonly emphasized related to spectral efficiency and frequency domain interoperability of public safety communications. However, wide range of opportunities introduced by the awareness, learning and intelligence features of cognitive radios necessitate the reassessment of opportunities to the public safety and emergency case communications from a more complementary aspect. One aspect can be the development of applications that will lead to communicate, locate and reach victims who are stuck in disaster areas, underground (e.g. underground mine explosions) or behind obstacles. It is aimed to discuss how communication with survivors can be accomplished and how the estimation of their locations utilizing received signals can be achieved by benefiting from the advantages of cognitive radio technology. Second objective is to define the scope of the research required for adaptive and secure physical layer reconfigurability to overcome communication congestion and to satisfy the interoperability and security requirements of public safety communications systems during emergency cases and extreme situations.