NTN Architecture for PPDR in 5G-Advanced

Satellites have been included in 3GPP as non-terrestrial networks (NTN) in release 17 which bears a strong potential for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) due to their resilience to terrestrial disaster events. Hence, we investigated on the possible architecture options to provide Mission Critical (MC) services to first responders via NTNs based on service flows and requirements. 5G-Advanced NTN setups including Integrated Access Backhaul (IAB) and multi-connectivity are considered in this paper. NTNs can be a fundamental complement during both, routine task and disaster events for first responders and the affected population. A regenerative architecture with a full gNB on-board the satellites is a fitting and future-proof solution offering low latency and has potential for direct user to user links. ATSSS-like multi-connectivity can further increase resilience, robustness and provides complementary capacity.