Ask 100 emergency responders who've been to a
major event what their worst challenge was and every single one of them will
surely tell you: communications.
Their lives are getting easier, thanks to a
dedicated band of the 700 MHz radio spectrum located just above that of digital
TV broadcast channels. Band 14, as it’s called, was reserved for public safety
providers by the Spectrum Act of 2012, using the LTE (Long-Term Evolution)
technology featured in most 4G-enabled smartphones.
LTE has some valuable properties for emergency
needs. It penetrates buildings and walls easily, and it covers large geographic
areas with less infrastructure than higher frequencies. It’s also
lightning-fast and highly reliable.
Eighteen vendors from around the United States
gathered in Brighton, CO, on May 3 under the auspices of FirstNet Colorado to
showcase evolving technologies for about 120 participating potential users.
Participants carried functional samples of
personnel tracking devices and ruggedized cell phones with them throughout the
day, while they kicked the tires of technology that has been in development
throughout the United States for the past three years. The tracking devices
recorded their attendance and movements, while the cell phones enabled them to
communicate with one another, ushering them from room to room in response to a
tight schedule.
FirstNet Colorado is coordinating the state’s
efforts to prepare for a nationwide high-speed data and cellular voice network
for public safety providers using LTE. Here’s how that might work, using
technology that has been developed so far:
Imagine you’ve been called to a ski resort
where skiers have reported a friend buried in an avalanche. The local ski
patrol has called for a drone, and the drone patrols the avalanche area in
search of the skier’s cell phone. (A cell phone emits a constant
radio-frequency signal until its battery goes dead.) The drone’s operator uses
a tablet to map a search area based on aerial photos, using a predetermined
search strategy. The drone quickly conducts the search, and provides the rescue
team with a GPS location before landing on a nearby ridge to maximize its
battery life. From the ridge, it continues to accept and respond to commands
while it transmits photos of the searchers’ progress.
Now imagine you’re with a SWAT team on the
scene of a live shooting at a multi-story urban warehouse where two police
officers have gone silent during a drug bust. Using 3D mapping software, the
SWAT team locates both officers in different rooms on the second and third
floors. The software enables a responder using a laptop to communicate with
small sensors attached to the individual officers’ uniforms. An incident
commander can view a 3D line drawing of the warehouse, including the locations
of its internal features and showing the locations of the officers. Additional
software communicates with more sensors, this time attached to flexible plastic
panels (resembling x-ray film) inserted in the officers’ body armor. The film
sensors detect and map the officers’ penetrating torso wounds.
Finally, suppose you’re at the scene of a
wildland fire in a remote area where there is no phone coverage. A state patrol
officer opens the lid of a ruggedized suitcase and sets up a complete
communications center. Within 10 minutes, you can communicate voice and data at
will with any resources you might need, on scene or not, ranging from the
closest trauma center to FEMA. Your field units can communicate with one
another using assigned frequencies on their normal LMR (land mobile radio)
handy-talkies, or via tough, highly ruggedized LTE-equipped smartphones. In
fact, they can also use PTT (push-to-talk) software on their phones to
communicate in whichever mode they choose.
Agencies operating on Band 14 will be using
LTE devices with five times the transmission power of a commercial cell phone.
The system’s design is intended to provide 97% geographic coverage, and offers
to address challenges like:
- Incidents in densely populated ones featuring
large crowds using hundreds of personal cell phones simultaneously;
- Interagency communication needs, including
data such as real-time photos and some video; and
- Mission-critical need-to-know things like
emerging weather patterns, flood threats, hydrant locations, hospital availability,
routes of ingress and egress, vehicle locations, personnel tracking and
overall scope of the incident.
Can LTE cellular technology supersede the need for current radio
systems? Experts disagree.
Craig Scherer, a fire systems technical specialist at the Denver
Fire Department’s Communications Center, thinks the system would be too
vulnerable to interference from public cell phone use. He said latency, the
delay between transmitting a signal and receiving a usable answer, would also
impair critical communications.
“LTE is fast,” says Ed Mills, FirstNet’s Colorado outreach and
education manager, who moderated the conference. “It’s line-of-sight, and it
happens at the speed of light. A transmission from the West Coast to the East
Coast (of the United States) would happen in a fraction of a second. There’s no
need for a signal to bounce off of a satellite.”
Mills said one variable of implementation time is that
it depends on how promptly 'FirstNet's network partner' could comply with the
system’s growth.
Recent history clearly illustrates the importance and
effectiveness of this technology. Sonim, Mutualink, Parallel Wireless, Verizon
and numerous other vendors partnered to help local public safety agencies
provide Band 14 coverage for the Rose Parade on January 1, 2016, in Pasadena
and at Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016, in San Francisco. Both of those
events involved huge crowds of people (all using personal cell phones
constantly), in atmospheres of heightened international security and massive media
attention.
Vendors at the event included:
- John Bohike demonstrated DataSoft’s AID or
Automatic Injury Detection system. This plastic panel is inserted in the
carrier of a ballistic vest. The small black sender in the lower left
corner of the panel is a cellular transmitter. Within seconds of the panel
being pierced by a projectile, it can report up to four wounds per panel
to a land mobile radio (via Bluetooth), a cellular phone or a military
radio. Visit www.datasoft.com.
- ESChat provides a secure PTT utility and
various other incident management software for ruggedized phones like
Sonim XP7 Android. (It’s also Mac and iOS-compatible.) ESChat was used on
Band 14 to coordinate the 2016 Rose Bowl, and was used interoperably with
the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s P25 land radio system.
Visit www.eschat.com.
- Sierra Wireless InMotion Solutions exhibited a
number of hardware and software offerings, including a mobile communications
gateway the size of a book. Mountable in the trunk of a squad car or under
the seat of an ambulance, it creates a Wi-Fi “bubble” around a vehicle
that connects it to the best available network—LTE Band 14 for public
safety, with fallback to commercial LTE networks. Visit www.sierrawireless.com/gatewaysolutions.
- TRX Systems provides NEON Personnel Tracker,
an indoor 3D personnel locating system that uses pager-sized sensors,
Windows-based command software and an Android app to dynamically map the
movement of personnel once they enter a structure. Visit www.TRXsystems.com.
- Unmanned Aircraft Systems exhibited a 24-inch,
$75,000 Canadian unmanned quadcopter as one of a number of potential
on-scene aircraft. Its (video and still) cameras, struts, motors, rotors,
battery and electronics are all field-replaceable as individual modules.
It can stay airborne for 45 minutes, has a functional line-of-sight range
of 1 kilometer, and can be digitally controlled from a tablet. This device
has been used at a range of up to seven miles. Visit www.unmannedexperts.com.
Thom Dick has been a passionate
advocate of sick people and the safety of their field caregivers since 1970. He
has written hundreds of articles and three books on those subjects, including
the People Care books. You can reach Thom via
Facebook, or at boxcar414@comcast.net.
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