Subject: [NEXTEL-1] SDR Forum targets public safety

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:21:13 -0500

SDR Forum targets public safety
March 23, 2004 6:21pm
Mobile Radio Technology

The Software Defined Radio Forum soon will announce the formation of a
special interest group targeted at the public-safety sector. The SDR
Forum plans to hold SIG-related workshops during this month's IWCE 2004
trade show and conference in Las Vegas (March 22-26) and in April at the
Forum's regularly scheduled general meeting to be held in Germany.
The SIG will be charged with involving vendors and public-safety
organizations in the forum's initiatives to promote development of
software-defined radio technologies, according to Fred Frantz, SDR Forum
member and director of law-enforcement communications for L3
Communications Government Services.

“Public safety already is involved in the SDR Forum to a degree, but we
want to get … out to the broader community,” Frantz said.

Working closely with the SDR Forum's regulatory committee will be
emphasized, said John Powell, a senior consulting engineer and member of
the SDR Forum's board of directors. The U.S. lags behind Europe on
interoperability, according to Powell.
While many European countries have adopted the TETRA (terrestrial
trunked radio) standard, the North American Project 25 standard backed
by the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials
International and other major first-responder organizations is optional,
Powell said. While P25 was being developed, two large systems —
Motorola's Smartnet II and M/A-Com's EDACS — and several smaller
systems, all proprietary and none interoperable, became entrenched.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle for SDR will be to get these companies to
cross-license their waveforms to companies building SDR products, Powell
said.

While the U.S. might trail Europe on interoperability, it is well ahead
of the continent when it comes to public-safety broadband. Where the FCC
has set aside 50 MHz of spectrum at 4.9 GHz for such use, no such
spectrum has been allocated in Europe, Frantz said. The SDR Forum
supports Project Mesa, which would create a common broadband standard
for North America and Europe, and it will be up to the SIG to evangelize
across the Atlantic. “It would double the market base, which would
attract more vendors,” said Frantz, who predicted movement would occur
on this standard in the next 18 months.
Expanding the marketplace is seen as a key to making widespread
deployment of software-defined radios — currently too bulky and pricey
for public-safety organizations — a reality.

“A software-defined radio for law enforcement, with encryption, would
cost between $4000 and $5000. Compare that to a Nextel phone that you
could get for $300,” said Tom Sorley, radio services supervisor for
Orange County, Fla. “The ideal scenario would be a cell phone [in which]
you could insert a memory stick with all of the public-service
parameters. You would have the small form factor, plus the intelligence
that would make it work like a public-safety radio.”

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