LTE : A wireless mesh network-assisted backhaul strategy for mobile base station deployment

Abstract

It has been recognized that effective communications and the ability to share various media are keys to a successful operation in public safety and military applications. LTE is becoming the most widely deployed broadband communication technology making it the technology of choice for public safety to allow first responders to seamlessly communicate between agencies and across geographical locations in tactical and emergency scenarios since it is scalable, robust, and resilient. However, LTE is a cellular network by design in that it has planned and fixed antenna locations, and is connected to a common packet core network. Even though the LTE self-organized operation makes the planning, configuration, management, optimization and healing of the network simpler and faster, LTE networks are not well-suited for the moving cell, particularly to establish the backhaul link among the base stations. In this project, we present a concept of enhanced evolved Node B (e2NB) to enable meshing of the neighboring e2NBs while moving. We evaluate the performance of the network using the Open Air Interface (OAI) LTE implementation. Simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed approach to build a self-organized mesh network over LTE. They also show that LTE quality-of-service requirements can be maintained in a wireless mesh network.