A Technology Independent Security Gateway for Future Emergency Telecommunication Systems (ETS) |
Emergency telecommunication systems play an important role in people’s daily life, supporting
Li F, Clarke NL, Furnell SM, Fajardo JO, Liberal F, Sidibe M
communication for the public and first responders during emergency related incidents. Nonetheless, the
majority of existing emergency communications are limited to traditional voice and text message services
due to the data bandwidth constraint of current networks. It is well known that emerging 4G broadband
communication technologies have the ability to provide a range of multimedia services (e.g. picture
transmission) that could be utilised by the emergency services to save lives. However, a secured
emergency conversation cannot be established between incompatible mobile/end devices without the
assistance of a security gateway. Therefore, this paper proposes a technology independent security
gateway that provides security support for future emergency telecommunication systems. The proposed
security gateway works in three modes to cover all the situations in which its assistance is required to
establish a secured emergency conversation. In addition, the development process of the security gateway
will also be fully discussed in this paper.