You are in:
Seamless Mobility
Motorola explains how Seamless Mobility helps meet the high expectations of Public Safety Users...
Today’s political climate means that populations have high expectations of public safety services. Agencies are looking at communications technology to help meet these expectations and increase officer safety and efficiency. Jo Moore, market development director at Motorola, examines how a new concept, seamless mobility, is enabling these high expectations to be met by putting mission critical data in the hands of officers efficiently and securely, no matter where they are.
Recent tragic events and increasing concerns over public security mean that now, more than ever, governments are under growing pressure to deliver on their promise to protect their citizens. People expect to be protected against sophisticated criminals and are demanding an effective response to dramatic events. From governments’ point of view, this response needs to be cost effective, while making officer safety paramount.
Information needs to be delivered to the person or place where decisions are being made. Vital elements in enabling this efficient and cost effective response are the information available to the officers on the scene and effective inter-agency communication. It is critical that the officers and the control room can access the information they need immediately and securely.
The communications technology that provides this access needs to be highly reliable, secure and capable of handling large amounts of data quickly. It also needs to seamlessly operate across different environments and technologies, providing a continuity of experience across all networking technologies, linking officers to mission critical information so they are best equipped to deal with whatever situation their jobs present. It needs to bring the crime lab and command and control centre to the street, giving agencies a powerful weapon in the fight against crime and minimising the time an officer has to spend back at the office – current estimates for police officers are that only 1.5 hours out of an 8 hour shift is spent on the beat. This is what Motorola believes seamless mobility to be.
Stated simply, seamless mobility puts critical information at the fingertips of first responders where and when they need it, using the best communications technology for the task. The responder doesn’t need to worry about what communications technology is being used to get the information they need – it happens automatically.
Fingertip data
Traditionally, the emergency services have relied on paper based systems and basic voice communications to obtain the data they need to best anticipate what they will encounter at an incident. The burgeoning number of communications technologies and increasingly powerful computing means that new systems needed to be developed to ensure effective collection and distribution of data across agencies and technologies.
Most of these new systems and technologies are suitable for the office, i.e. a static location with high bandwidth. However, our major goal is to deliver this information to the hand of the officer. At the moment, most agencies rely on voice communications, often provided by third parties, to deliver data to the mobile officer wherever he or she is. Unfortunately, reliance on operators can limit data throughput due to the nature of public networks – availability and bandwidth can’t be guaranteed, particularly in crisis situations. In addition a public network is just that, public, so security levels aren’t sufficient for mission critical usage.
The challenge lies in providing access to a wide range of data sources that the mobile officer needs reliably and securely. For example in a police scenario, many users rely on voice communication to request the control room operator get information for them. A control room today has access to a significant number of sources, from National Police National Computer (PNC) records thought to local data such as Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and mapping data that can be sent wirelessly to the requesting officer. However, the throughput of data in this scenario is strictly limited by the available resources in the control room. Whilst it is simple for a police officer to request the data using voice, the response to that request will always be subject to other priorities and the human resources available at that time. How do we ensure that the data transactional response is guaranteed?
As the number of data sources available is growing rapidly, this challenge is getting tougher. Just in the last year, manufacturers, including Motorola, introduced handheld radio terminals with integrated GPS. Now individual officers as well as vehicles can be located - increasing officer safety and effectiveness of command and control as they know the last location of an officer and closest responder to an incident.
Image based data is growing in importance as a source of intelligence and a way of improving officer effectiveness. Images from traffic and CCTV cameras or digital cameras can complement database images such as mugshots to ensure officers respond in the best possible way. For example, a police officer could use a fingerprint recognition application on a terminal to verify a suspect’s identity immediately, rather than returning to the station.
In short, what this means is a tremendous amount of information is available and the challenge is mobilising this data in a sensible and efficient manner. So, when adding new data sources to the network, a centralised, server based solution approach is required - with terminals allowing the user to access that data. This centralised approach also means consistency and the ability to easily manage access control and permissions.
Taking Airwave as an example, the UK Police’s network, there are 100,000 MTH800 hand portable terminals, all data capable, deployed on the Airwave system. If applications are terminal centric, the operational implications in upgrading all those terminals is costly and time consuming unless it is done from one central point.
Delivering intelligence to the mobile officer
The data and applications that bring the intelligence to the mobile officer can be categorised by bandwidth requirements or the feasibility of a particular application. One of the best ways of looking at this is by content, and this can be further refined into a number of tiers. These tiers cover:
- basic content access (text only)
- images
- live images
- multimedia content based applications
Each tier has a different bandwidth requirement. TETRA (TErrestrial Trunked RAdio), in its current form supports the majority of applications in the first two tiers. In fact recent research indicates it supports the majority of data applications used by the emergency services today and is likely to continue to do so past the year 2010. Simple Packet Data can support all the text based applications which in reality covers many of the applications discussed. By extending the capability with Multi Slot Packet Data, which will soon be available on the Airwave network in the UK, more applications with richer content can also be supported by TETRA.
However, the moving images that comprise the last two tiers involve much richer content. This brings a fresh challenge - how do you select an appropriate bearer that will co-exist with TETRA and can be used according to operational requirements?
A complimentary new bearer
In looking for an appropriate bearer, we must firstly remember that currently there is no private wideband spectrum available in Europe. Therefore everyone will have to use shared spectrum, although with new technology a private pipe on a shared spectrum is possible.
Public networks such as GPRS and 3G can offer wireless broadband, but Motorola’s experience indicates that they were not designed to address the specific needs of mission critical data. Public networks by nature are accessible to the public – in times of need, people use their phones, for example in traffic jams, at major sporting events and when disasters occur. During the aftermath of the Madrid bombing the authorities actually shut down the mobile phone system because it was in melt down due to the sheer volume of calls. This proves we cannot rely on capacity on public networks being available to the emergency services when they need it.
Fortunately, new and evolving solutions are opening the way for secure, wireless broadband connectivity. These devices allow the wireless extension of LAN / WAN (Local Area Networks / Wide Area Networks) for permanent or temporary applications, all of which work in conjunction with and complement TETRA.
These networks, such as the Canopy™ wireless broadband (point to point) solution from Motorola, provide a complimentary solution to the 802.11 based Wireless LAN "hotspots". In fact Canopy™ is based upon a pre-cursor to the emerging WiMAX standard. In addition, the Canopy™ network can integrate with the local control room network, so once the data is captured it can be stored on a server in the fixed network and then distributed or accessed by TETRA users on the secure network in a way that is transparent to the end-user. Therefore, Canopy™ can actually provide seamless mobility for the emergency services.
However Canopy™, like similar technologies such as WiFi, is ideal for static use. When there is a need for mobile access to broadband data, other technologies are more appropriate.
Motorola Mesh network solutions allow peer to peer communication without the need for access points. Public safety patrol officers can communicate with each other while mobile; as Mesh’s unique routing ability provides high data throughput links between the units without the need for infrastructure.
When access points do become available, Mesh-enabled networks give subscribers access to the wider public safety infrastructure by allowing nodes to act as intermediate hops even though a subscriber is not within range of the infrastructure directly. For example, when policing a major event, such as a festival or sporting match, using Mesh enabled vehicles and officers, a police force can deploy a mobile broadband network that shares surveillance videos across all units. The mobile unit itself becomes its own network as Mesh is self forming. Again, an access point will allow this information to be made available to the wider TETRA infrastructure and thus other users.
By coupling Mesh network solutions and Canopy™ networks, we can provide true mission critical broadband data. By linking these networks we can start to see the reality of seamless mobility of mission critical data.
The user experience
However, technology itself isn’t always enough. It needs to be easy to deploy, manage and simple to use. At Motorola, our vision of seamless mobility is not just about continuity of bits, it is about continuity of experiences. In some cases this means continuing a session uninterrupted; in other cases, it means transforming information to the appropriate form based on user need.
There are many elements to achieving this. First, content must be easy to locate, access and move across diverse networks. In order to achieve this, it needs to be intelligently processed, allowing the easy extraction of information that is needed to locate and render content across diverse devices. The aim should be to create user centric content that is device and context sensitive, driven by affordable, available broadband.
The development of terminals, from simple push-to-talk voice radios to devices with sophisticated cellular style keypads and 32 bit color displays, has been rapid. The next major development will be in functionality that isn’t visible, but will be experienced. Devices will interpret many inputs other than the keypad, for example handwriting, speech, and maybe even gestures.
For decades wireless technology has connected person to person. Now we are seeing developments in connectivity of people to things - for example, sensing biometric data, such as body temperature and heart rate for fire officers. This type of advancement will have a major impact on the safety of officers as it could help prevent the overheating that is responsible for 40 percent of firefighter fatalities.
In the world of seamless mobility, technologies will and must co-exist. Each one meets a specific application requirement and will need to connect diverse networks seamlessly to provide an essential experience for the officer. The desired improvement in response and officer safety will not happen if the officer has to authenticate every time their terminal moves from say a TETRA network to a Mesh-enabled system. As heterogeneous networks become a reality, the role of communications providers will focus less on technology and more on service provision – with the overlying role of authentication, control and applications management.
Finally, seamless mobility needs to ensure that real time communication - communication that is available a fraction of a second after a Push-to-Talk button is pressed – is guaranteed no matter what bearer of device is used. It should offer true seamless mobility: the ability to access data in one place and seamlessly move that data to another so that, for example, the data available in-vehicle stays with the user as they leave the vehicle and then again as they move into the office.
A meaningful reality
In conclusion, for seamless mobility to deliver the improved responsiveness, officer safety and efficiencies for emergency services, it needs to be useful to end-users and stakeholders alike. It is therefore important to remember the following key points:
- When mobilising data and managing the introduction of new data sources the operational environment is optimal. Terminals should be application independent, purely providing access to the application and data needed. Seamless mobility should increase user flexibility in devices and combine data sources to enable a greater variety of applications.
- By deploying applications consistently and with a greater degree of interoperability among communications technologies, most users can easily have access to the information sources they need when out and about, such as CCTV systems and national databases.
- For more content rich applications it is vital to select complementary bearers and to capitalise on the integration between networks. Operational security, bandwidth and value for money are also important factors in selecting the complementary bearer.
- Finally seamless mobility is not just about technology but about people and processes. The data experience should be simple and appropriate to the user and help them do their job more effectively.
Seamless mobility from Motorola is not just about the continuity of bits, it’s about a continuity of experiences.
