The ability to quickly locate an individual that is either missing (search and rescue) or is a suspect in an illegal activity (apprehend) is very important for public safety. Statistics show that the quicker a missing person can be found the higher the possibility they can be found in good condition. Similarly for a suspect in an illegal activity, the quicker they can be located the less likely they can hide or commit another illegal activity. These activities can be in both an outdoor environment and indoors.
Leveraging the sensing capability of a 3GPP network and integrating the feature with other 5G capabilities (e.g., metaverse, augmented reality, location, network relay, etc.) can provide a huge advantage to public safety.
In an outdoor example, an elderly person with Alzheimer's Disease wanders off into the woods and does not know how to return. The longer it takes for public safety to locate this person the more likely they may suffer injuries or medical issues, such as dehydration, cuts, bruises, broken bones, or worse, death. Another example is an individual who robs a bank and escapes into the nearby forest and swamps. The longer it takes to track down and find the individual, the more difficult it becomes and the bigger the risk of them taking hostages, hurting others, or escaping completely.
With the density of base station deployments and with large numbers of 5G enabled UE's, the 5G coverage includes a large amount of the territory of most countries. These base station signals and the signals of UE's can also be used to sense the environment for object detection.
Assumptions for this use case:
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Trusted third-party applications for interpreting and presenting the data to public safety is required,
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Devices must be trusted and communicate information togethers; and
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Precision 3-axis location is needed.
An indoor example would be a firefighter entering a building with limited or no visibility using sensing integrated with firefighter heads-up displays/UEs (metaverse/AI/ML) sensing can better allow the firefighters to locate possible people trapped inside and allow them a better view of the rooms as they work through the building.
Indoor 5G coverage can be challenging but leveraging features like UE-to-UE relay, UE-to-Network Relay, UE-to-Network multi-hop relay and UE-to-UE multi-hop relay and allowing the devices to work together can provide good coverage and capability to provide indoor sensing services in this challenging environment.
Assumptions for this use case:
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The use of UE-to-Network Relay and UE-to-UE relay can provide a more reliable connectivity.
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Devices must be trusted and communicate information togethers; and
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Precision 3-axis location is needed.
The individual is located faster than without 3GPP sensing capability. The additional harm that might have occurred to the individual or community is avoided.
[PR.5.27.6-1]
The 5G system shall support exposing the information of sensing result (e.g., location, relative location, velocity vectors, relative headings, etc.) to the trusted and secure mission critical applications.
[PR.5.27.6-2]
The 5G system shall support mechanisms for combining 3GPP sensing data and non-3GPP sensing data (e.g., body cameras.) depending on location, availability of non-3GPP sensing data, and public safety applications.
[PR.5.27.6-3]
The 5G system shall support security and protection of the 3GPP sensing data, non-3GPP sensing data, and sensing results.
[PR.5.27.6-4]
The 5G system shall provide a secure sensing service for Mission Critical Services.
[PR.5.27.6-5]
The 5G system shall be able to provide the sensing service with the following KPIs: