An Emergency Alert Broadcast Based on the Convergence of 5G and ATSC 3.0

• Main Authors: Yoon-Kwan Byun, Sekchin Chang, Seong Jong Choi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-03-01
• Series: Electronics
• Subjects: emergency alert; broadcast; convergence; 5G; ATSC 3.0
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/6/758

We propose a novel emergency alert broadcast mechanism for mobile phone users, which is based on the convergence of 5G and ATSC 3.0. Cellular networks including 5G adopt a broadcast technique for emergency alert. This technique just delivers a text-based message. Moreover, the message only includes a limited number of characters. Therefore, cellular networks cannot afford to provide abundant information in emergency cases. Broadcast networks such as ATSC 3.0 also offer an emergency alert broadcast service. This service can deliver a multimedia-based message in emergency cases. Therefore, the ATSC 3.0 supports more abundant information in the cases of emergency alert broadcasts. Especially, the ATSC 3.0 employs wake-up functionality and location information, which enables the delivery of emergency alerts to idle-state receivers in emergency areas. However, it is unlikely that the wake-up functionality and the location information are directly applicable to mobile phone users due to some practical issues. In order to improve the emergency alert broadcast service in mobile environments, we converge the 5G and the ATSC 3.0 networks, which effectively exploits the advantages of the networks. For the convergence network, we suggest a modified table, which associates the 5G message with the ATSC 3.0 message in the cases of emergency alerts. We also present a novel scenario for delivery of the emergency alert messages. Simulation results show that the convergence significantly enhances the receiver performance for emergency alert broadcast.