When natural disasters strike, first responders must be ready and prepared for immediate mobilization. Their mission is to quickly assess damage and - most importantly - begin executing search and rescue and other lifesaving operations.

For their missions to be successful, and for lives to be saved, first responders rely on an arsenal of connected technologies to communicate with each other and execute their operations. These technologies require access to reliable and resilient connectivity services to be leveraged. But when disasters occur, terrestrial cellular towers are often left handicapped, congested or destroyed. And, of course, disasters also happen in remote areas where terrestrial connectivity is often limited to begin with.

Without connectivity or the ability to communicate and coordinate within an affected area, first responders are unable to adequately perform their jobs, putting their safety at risk and sacrificing precious time that could be used on lifesaving operations.

Satellite Connectivity and Disaster Response

To bridge these connectivity gaps, first responders turn to satellites – or non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) – that provide a connection to an access network. In coordination with ground systems, satellites make connectivity available to first responders in the field and enable the technologies they rely on.

“In the wake of a disaster when traditional connectivity options are impacted, satellite-based, portable communication solutions serve as the leading option for first responders to use wherever they need to operate,” explained Will Mudge, Chief Technology Officer of Speedcast, a communications satellite technology company.

Some of the portable ground systems that harness the connectivity provided by satellites in disaster response scenarios include Cell Towers on Wheels (COWs) and Cell Towers on Light Trucks (COLTs). COWs and COLTs are 4G and 5G small cell, miniature base stations that are completely mobile and leverage NTN satellite connectivity.

“Service providers like Verizon and AT&T have COW and COLT capabilities that they can deploy after disasters,” explained Terry Stockholm, FEMA’s former Chief of Disaster IT Operations. “COWs and COLTs enable them to rapidly reestablish their cell networks in the aftermath of a natural disaster.”

These mobile base stations are strategically dispersed throughout disaster-struck areas and distribute connectivity amongst first responders on the ground via wide wireless area networks (WWANs) with ranges that can span several kilometers.

Rapid deploy connectivity kits are also used by first responders to establish communications in the aftermath of a disaster. “Rapid deploy connectivity kits offer simple, reliable communications options, often in a single, easy to manage case,” explained Mudge. “Rapid deploy kits can enable voice, video, IoT, telemedicine and other applications, even in the most remote locations.”

Satellite providers can also leverage air-based systems to distribute connectivity across a region after a natural disaster has struck. In 2017, SES partnered with Google’s Loon to provide satellite connectivity to regions in Puerto Rico, leveraging Loon’s high-altitude balloons as distribution nodes.

“When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, it wiped out around 90 percent of the terrestrial fiber on the ground,” explained Hung Tran. “SES went in and leveraged its O3b Classic network – in conjunction with Google’s Loon balloons - to provide a 4G LTE network to support first responders and other end users on the ground.”

Preparing and standing up these localized NTNs takes a considerable amount of time. First response teams must first conduct analysis before deployment to determine the available satellite capacity within an affected region and make decisions on what equipment must be delivered and deployed on site.

In certain scenarios, a satellite’s static, fixed beams may not pass over a disaster-struck region, or – if they do pass over – capacity may be limited or congested due to high utilization by users on the ground. “In the past, satellite operators may have had existing customers on a particle beam,” explained Tran. “Providing power and service capacity may not have been feasible or possible.”

In scenarios when satellite operators can share higher levels of capacity, the ground infrastructure may not be configured to scale up and accommodate those capacity levels. This lack of flexibility and elasticity can create challenges for first responders and block them from accessing the connectivity they require.

The Flexibility and Elasticity of Software-Defined Networks

One emerging digital transformation breakthrough in satellite connectivity services that is poised to overcome these capacity barriers is the software-defined network (SDN).

With the emergence of software-defined satellites and ground systems, the issues surrounding coverage, capacity and high congestion are easing. SDNs allow for satellite beams to be rapidly steered and redirected in order to deliver scaled-up capacity to specific regions. This enables first responders to have the connectivity levels they require when and where they need it.

“Today with O3b mPOWER, we have more than 4,000 beams that we can essentially place in any affected area between 50 degrees North and 50 degrees South latitude, assuming the ground systems are available,” said Tran. “We can turn up that service fairly quickly, whereas in the past it could take days to move beams to another area.”

But for this steered capacity to be fully harnessed in the field, the ground infrastructure must also be software-defined and elastic enough to handle higher capacity. When hardware on the ground is software-defined, it can be reconfigured to scale up or scale down on the capacity it can receive and distribute across a wide area network (WAN) via COWs, COLTs, rapid deploy kits and other connectivity distribution solutions. This is a crucial element in the SDN equation, because software-defined satellites may be capable of steering additional capacity to a targeted area, but if the ground infrastructure is not software-defined, it will render the extra capacity useless.

Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) are also playing a role in leveraging SDNs in disaster recovery. “With a software-controlled approach to networking architecture, an enterprise-grade SD-WAN technology converges multiple networks – from GEO, MEO and LEO satellite to fiber, microwave and cellular – into a single, high-performance WAN,” said Mudge. “This technology further supports first responders on the front lines of disaster recovery efforts, allowing for the integration of multi-path, multi-orbit communication options.”

Mudge explained that if a terrestrial service fails, a complete network management system will seamlessly transition to the next optimal connectivity path option available. “SDN’s network optimization and intelligent path selection capability not only boosts application performance, but also enhances operational productivity and user experience,” said Mudge. “By utilizing intelligent routing and link prioritization, you can identify the most efficient connectivity paths, resulting in optimized network traffic and improved overall performance.”

Current Challenges Facing SDN Deployment

The scalability, resiliency, and elastic capacity benefits of SDNs in disaster response efforts are game changing, but there are challenges that lie in the way of fully realizing them. The primary roadblock is the static nature of hardware found in orbit and on the ground.

“The challenge is getting the satellite industry, ground vendors and the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that make the equipment for these networks to move away from closed proprietary equipment, and move towards virtualizing the network,” said Kevin Tobias, Director of Product Management at Kratos. “This disaggregation of network functions is key to the virtualization and reconfiguration of hardware on the ground. SDNs and virtualization allow for hardware on the ground to be completely reconstituted and be reconfigured to meet several mission needs.”

Currently, on traditional ground infrastructure, if a network function is tied to a specific piece of hardware and a first responder needs to execute five network functions, they will be required to stand up and operate five separate pieces of unique equipment. But if those network functions were virtualized via an SDN, first responders would only need one piece of equipment to execute operations, which would save time and resources that could be dedicated to other critical response applications.

Stovepiped, inelastic hardware creates another challenge for first responders when attempting to scale-up the level of capacity that a piece of hardware can handle. If hardware is static and unable to receive additional capacity, first response crews cannot harness extra satellite capacity during their missions.

Analysys Mason expects over 27,000 satellites with flexible architectures to be manufactured and launched between 2021 and 2031. But the ground segment is lagging in SDN adoption, which creates interoperability issues and only allows limited use of SDN functions during disaster response scenarios. Ground vendors must begin to fully embrace the digital transformation of their systems for them to become elastic, scalable and accommodate the network capabilities that SDN satellites can offer.

Though SDNs seem to be the answer to solving some of the most pressing capacity and connectivity issues around disaster response missions, there are still some challenges that remain to fully deploy these virtualized systems and networks in the wake of a natural disaster.

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