Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Researchers Work to Make Wireless Better

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 04:37:20 -0400

Researchers Work to Make Wireless Better

September 12, 2003 2:41pm

HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP)  Researchers are testing ideas to make
wireless technologies safer, giving authorities a way to share
encrypted information instantly through whatever kinds of networks 

like radio, cell phone, Wi-Fi  are available to them. 

Paul Kolodzy and other researchers are testing these ideas at
the Stevens Institute of Technology's Wireless Network Security
Center with one main goal: avoiding the communications knots that
have plagued emergency responders for years and glared on Sept. 11,
2001. 

The ferries on the river? Let's give them satellite transponders
that could get important data if radio systems become swamped in a 
crisis. That Port Authority building? Let's send it information
with a laser. 

Fire and police officials with radios on different frequencies
had trouble coordinating actions. Overwhelmed and weak radio 
transmissions kept commanders from tracking firefighters inside the
Trade Center and warning them the towers were about to collapse. 

There has since been little improvement in the communications
systems authorities would need in another catastrophe of such
magnitude. 

Key airwave frequencies remain congested. Newer radio equipment
is expensive and problematic. Different emergency agencies
communicate not only on different frequencies but with different 
terminology. 

Overall, agencies are getting better at jointly planning how to
handle regional emergencies, but that is a time-consuming slog. 

"Don't forget: We're government, and government doesn't move
that fast," said Vincent Stile, police radio director in Suffolk
County, N.Y., and president of the Association of Public-Safety 
Communications Officials. 

Even so, in a world where conversations, shopping transactions, e-
mails and other bits of our digital existence routinely flit
across the airwaves, technology experts say there should be better 
solutions for situations with lives at stake. 

Stevens' engineers hope to weave several network technologies
into one system that would let public-safety officials get a
clearer sense of unfolding emergencies and communicate better with 
authorities in neighboring jurisdictions. 

Inside the second-floor office of the school's Wireless Network 
Security Center, engineer Jason Evans clicks on a laptop to show a 
satellite photo of Hoboken. Stars denoting campus police cars move
on the screen, tracked in real time as the cops' laptops
communicate with wireless computer networks at Stevens and cellular
phone networks off campus. 

An adjoining laptop shows photos just taken by cameras that are 
automatically tripped by sensors on fences and at other strategic
spots on campus. 

"We're trying to link a network of networks," said Kolodzy,
who previously served as wireless guru for the Pentagon and the
Federal Communications Commission. "There's a huge amount of 
infrastructure out there  why can't we somehow exploit existing 
infrastructure instead of having to build yet another?" 

Similarly, some technologists expect big things from "software-
defined" radios that could communicate on several
different frequencies. A police radio, for example, could be
programmed to dodge interference while doubling as a cell phone. 

Another flexible technology showing promise is "mesh" or "ad
hoc" networking, which was developed in the military. In mesh
networks, individual radio devices serve not only as receivers but
also as relay points that pass information on to other devices. 

So while a firefighter might be too deep in a big building to be
able to radio directly back to command officials, in a mesh network
he need only be able to reach another firefighter nearby, whose
radio could zap a conversation or nugget of data to the next
closest radio, and so on until it reaches the intended target. 

The setup requires less power and deprives attackers of a
centralized target to take down. 

"It's like trying to kill an anthill. You can step on as many
ants as you want, and it doesn't matter," said Rick Rotondo, a
vice president of MeshNetworks Inc., which recently provided the 
technology to rescue crews in Orange County, Fla. 

Mesh networks also can give commanders real-time updates of
their users' physical locations, even indoors. 

That ability is "sort of the Holy Grail for first responders,"
said Nader Moayeri, a wireless-group manager at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology. "There is nothing like that
right now that they have." 

By adding special software to off-the-shelf handheld computers
with wireless networking cards, Moayeri's team has designed an ad
hoc network of devices that let emergency crews talk to each other,
share pictures and even make phone calls, using "voice over
Internet protocol" technology that translates sound into packets
of data. 

NIST is developing the technology in order to create standards
that all commercial vendors could follow  hopefully to avoid 
interoperability problems that plague emergency radio
communications. 

In recent years, many emergency responders have bought
"trunked" radio systems, which establish one network that
different agencies can use together. But those systems are
expensive, sometimes difficult to master and iffy in hilly areas
and big buildings. 

Plus, they generally transmit in the 800-megahertz band, a
frequency already used by mobile phone carriers, primarily Nextel 
Communications. The resulting interference often deadens
public-safety communications. 

Nextel is willing to move to other bands and pay for
public-safety agencies to realign their frequencies. But those
plans are being contested by rival wireless carriers that fear
Nextel might unfairly benefit from the spectrum swap. 

Another spat in Washington is complicating efforts to give public-
safety agencies the 700-megahertz band, which could support
new applications such as quick transfers of fingerprints, mug shots
and pictures useful in emergencies. 

Some TV broadcasters will have to vacate that band, but not
until 2006, and only then in markets where 85 percent of households
can get digital TV signals. 

Consequently, public-safety groups want Congress to put more
teeth into the 2006 deadline. 

"We've been squeezing as much as we have from the spectrum
available to us," said Stile, head of the public-safety
communications group. "The 700 band is an area of spectrum that we
need desperately." 

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20030912_1200.html

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