[Discuss-gnuradio] [Software-Defined Radio] Forum demo will bridge public safety nets

[phartke]

Forum demo will bridge public safety nets
By Ron Wilson, EE Times
Feb 6, 2003 (12:37 PM)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20030206S0040 

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The Software-Defined Radio Forum is preparing a 
demonstration design for a universal handheld radio that would allow 
the wireless systems of police, fire departments and other 
organizations to communicate. The design is being constructed with 
commercially available parts and is intended to erase the 
incompatibility of wireless systems used today by U.S. public safety 
organizations.

"I realized the importance of this application when I was watching a 
fire near our house in Austin," said Jonathan Ellis, chief executive 
officer of Predacomm Inc. (Austin, Texas), and an SDR Forum 
member. "Two fire departments responded. There were firemen on either 
side of a gulch, talking to each other by calling their respective 
dispatchers, and dictating things which the dispatchers then passed to 
each other over a land line. There was no way their two radio handsets 
could communicate directly."

There are approximately 52,000 police and fire departments in the 
United States, and perhaps an equal number of emergency medical 
response teams, search and rescue operations and similar organizations, 
Ellis said. Each purchases its own wireless voice and data systems, and 
most cannot communicate. "In a recent military study, there were 104 
different waveforms in use just within the scope of the Defense 
Department," Ellis said.

A group of seven or eight organizations representing public safety 
groups have come together to define a common radio standard under the 
so-called Project25 standards effort of the Association of Public 
Safety Communications Officials (APCO) and the Telecommunications 
Industry Association. While this effort enjoys widespread support in 
principle, few public safety organizations have the funds to convert 
all their communications to a new standard.

That could provide an opportunity for software-defined radio. The SDR 
Forum's demo handset, which is being constructed by the Forum's R/D and 
Technology Committee, will support four or five major protocols and be 
able to swap between them on the fly. That would permit a radio in the 
field to scan and identify the protocols in use at the scene of a 
particular incident and move among them as necessary.

If one of the supported protocols was Project25, public service 
organizations would have an incremental upgrade path to the new uniform 
standard. They could add SDR equipment as they replace or expand their 
inventories. The SDR handsets would support the local department's 
current waveforms, plus those used by a few key neighbors with which 
the department regularly works, and Project25. Thus, public safety 
organizations throughout the country could gradually move into 
Project25 compatibility without a major front-end capital commitment, 
Ellis explained.

Slim interest

The irony of the situation is that, with venture investors on the ropes 
and even large wireless vendors sitting on their hands, the SDR Forum 
committee seems to have an example of the next big thing all to itself. 
The feasibility of SDR has already been established by the military, 
which has successfully deployed SDR sets and mandates SDR's inclusion 
in military wireless purchases. The Joint Tactical Radio System office 
must now approve a waiver for purchases that are not based on SDR 
technology.

Yet the SDR Forum has received few offers from investors or member 
companies to contribute to the demonstration project, let alone 
productize the handheld SDR. The committee's work is proceeding with 
primarily volunteer labor.

In addition to the demonstration project, the SDR Forum is continuing a 
set of technical workshops for members. The next two sessions will 
cover RF MEMS technology and enabling technologies for RF, including 
tunable and smart antennas.