Driving Public Safety Broadband Through the Convergence of LMR and LTE Networks, Devices and Applications
By: Paul May, Senior Product Manager, Harris Corporation
As consumers of commercial mobile broadband communications, all of us have experience with the accelerating pace of innovations in mobile devices, applications and broadband networks for our personal communications. Within the past decade, consumers have moved past cellular voice to voice plus text, data, pictures and video communications as an integral part of their personal and professional lives. Public safety agencies, which continue to rely on Land Mobile Radio (LMR) for mission critical communications, have, for background, administrative and personal uses, closed the gap with consumers, and have adopted commercial devices and applications to augment LMR Push-to-talk (PTT). But the adoption of broadband technologies for mission critical communications requires that networks, devices, applications all move beyond the consumer feature set to mission-specific public safety capabilities for integration into the first responder’s workflow.
From public safety’s point of view, the most important for the adoption of mission critical broadband communications is end-to-end solutions which provide reliable, easy-of-use, and dynamically prioritized access for mission critical voice, video and data. In an end-to-end solution, reliability is a combination of many factors including networks that provide coverage, capacity, and access in all locations, provide operation during and after catastrophic events, and maintain service even with the congestion that occurs during major responses. Reliability also means that devices operate under the most challenging environmental conditions, with applications that support communication modes of last resort. Ease of use means intuitive operation under extremely high stress conditions, providing first responders with actionable information and not decision-crippling “data-overload.” LMR still dominates within public safety because, as private dedicated networks, the coverage, capacity, and reliability of LMR meets the standards of “public safety-grade” communications. Where LMR is challenged to deliver is with the integration of multimedia into the public safety workflow. First responders realize that in some instances, a picture really does say a thousand words, and they recognize that LMR cannot effectively transmit images or video transmissions. Thus today, LMR is being supplemented for non-emergency communications by broadband technologies.
Today, the only choice for public safety broadband is the use commercial of broadband networks. However, “consumer-grade” public broadband networks are exactly that. For economic reasons, commercial networks do not operate with local control over prioritized access with uniform, hardened, public safety-grade reliability. As almost every catastrophic weather incident or major incident has shown, these networks are susceptible to interruptions in communications during the response to critical and time-sensitive events. Consumer-grade applications typically also lack the high level of end-to-end security essential for public safety communications and operations. This repeated experience explains why first responders continue to invest in LMR for their foundational, go-to communication networks.
In 2012, the Federal Government created the FirstNet Authority to develop and deploy a nationwide, private, public-safety grade 4G LTE network for first responders. The National Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) will be specifically designed to provide secure, robust, and prioritized broadband service to first responders and will facilitate the deployment of mission-critical broadband applications and services.
While FirstNet continues its march toward a nationwide broadband network, communications network planners must continue to rely on and incorporate devices, applications and services that allow for converged communications across a variety of networks – including LMR, commercial cellular, and private broadband networks. Legacy LMR will continue to exist, and likely dominate public safety, well into the foreseeable future, however commercial cellular is available today and presents real potential for public safety if leveraged intelligently.
The single best way to approach future communication procurements is to think in terms of converged networks, devices and applications. Convergence means that services are delivered to the user with the same presentation, and with the same features and operation, regardless of what network those services run over. For example, traditional LMR Push-To-Talk (PTT) voice service includes prioritization (some calls are more critical than others), encryption, emergency declarations and talk-group patching (allowing different services to talk to each other). A converged PTT network would deliver these same services to broadband users without intermediate encryption/decryption services, or loss of end-to-end emergency declarations and prioritization. All of these PTT features should be built on standards-based voice coding, encryption, and messaging formats to ensure that public safety can interoperate with each other on a vendor-agnostic basis.
The same value proposition also holds for converged devices, which should provide for a mix of services across LMR, commercial cellular and private broadband networks. Procurements for new devices should carefully consider how the user equipment will support a variety of services as users move through different network coverage areas. Even agencies in urban areas with many broadband service providers should consider how these devices will support communications when catastrophic events result in a simultaneous surge in usage, as well as a reduction in capacity due to network outages. In these situations, multimode devices which fall back to secondary networks – whether LMR or LTE – will be ideal.
Make no mistake, there is a rising availability and adoption of applications and smart devices designed for public safety. However, until the NPSBN is built, first responders must continue to rely on mission-critical radio as their primary and most trusted communications device. This doesn’t mean that LTE is off limits though, and with the right approach to convergence today’s public safety professionals can have the best of both worlds. The next step for public safety is to identify what future services they need and converge them through networks, devices and applications so that they can continue to move forward in a strategic and effective manner.
About Paul May
Paul May is a Senior Product Manager for Harris Corporation’s Public Safety and Professional Communications business, based out of Lynchburg, VA. Mr. May oversees Harris’ Long Term Evolution (LTE) product offerings, and has more than 25 years of experience in the marketing, product management and engineering of products for the Land Mobile Radio industry. Before stepping into his current role in 2010, Mr. May was involved in the marketing and launch of M/A-COM's Project 25 systems business. Prior to that, he held technical marketing, product management and engineering positions for the M/A-COM/Ericsson/GE LMR businesses. Mr. May is a graduate of Clarkson University.
