Network slicing for mission critical communications

Mission Critical (MC) communications are key to effective Public Protection and Risk Reduction (PPRR) actions. The 3GPP standards include the definition of MC applications and services in an architectural framework compatible with current (LTE) and future (5G) mobile networks. In this paper we report an experimental activity where MC communication services are implemented in a fully virtualized environment, being deployed and tested in a multi-domain network slicing architecture compliant with the ETSI NFV MANO specifications. The level of automation in service deployment and the slice isolation features are demonstrated, in line with the 5G approach of separation between control and data plane, showing the benefits in terms of application performance and management flexibility.