Subject: [NEXTEL-1] New technologies could ease communications chaos in emergencies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 04:56:38 -0400

Posted on Fri, Sep. 12, 2003

New technologies could ease communications chaos in emergencies

HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP) - Perched on a hilltop campus across the Hudson River from
Manhattan, Paul Kolodzy sees more
than New York's hulking grandeur and the gap where the World Trade Center once
towered. He sees innumerable
places where wireless technologies ought to be making everyone safer.

Those 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.

And, says Kolodzy, why not give authorities in different agencies a way to share
encrypted information instantly through
whatever kinds of networks -- like radio, cell phone, Wi-Fi -- are available to
them at any given moment.

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.

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://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6757088.htm
------

On the Net:

http://www.stevens.edu/winsec

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