Page 34 - Annual-Report-201704

Public Safety

Mission-critical
Communications to
Rely on

Communication is a key
factor in an emergency
situation, whether small
incidents such as a man
overboard or major natural
disasters.

TETRA In September we published a new TR on the addition of voice
Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) is the leading technology services to the TETRA Enhanced Data Service (TEDS) channels
choice for critical communications users, with 3,8 million to improve spectral efficiency. We continued to improve the
terminals in use in 2016 and a projected 5 million by 2020. functionality of TETRA Release 1 and TEDS, particularly data
At the same time, use of the technology in business critical functionality.
markets such as the transport sector, the commercial sector
and utilities increased significantly again in 2016. We made good progress updating numerous existing
standards and specifications in response to feedback from
To maintain its success, TETRA is evolving towards a fully manufacturers and users, including 14 documents relating
integrated and seamless Information and Communications to interworking at the inter-system interface between two
Technologies solution, providing narrowband/wideband/ TETRA systems. Most of these revisions were completed
broadband wireless communications for mission-critical by the end of 2016. When all the various standards and
and business-critical Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) specifications have been published, we will develop
applications. Broadband will be a crucial factor in this, as corresponding TSs. This work will simplify the future
it can supply the high data speeds required for various key integration of TETRA into LTE.
applications including, for example, streaming video from the
scene of an incident. Security will continue to be a key issue for critical
communications in the future. In 2016 we updated the
In 2016, our TETRA and Critical Communications Evolution management rules for TETRA encryption and authentication
committee (TC TCCE) therefore focused on standardising algorithms. Work continued on a study into security
a broadband extension to the TETRA standard. However, mechanisms for mission-critical broadband systems and we
in the medium term most users see a hybrid of critical began work on a new TR on the security of interworking
communications TETRA and broadband networks as the way between TETRA and broadband critical applications.
forward, so we are also looking at methods of integrating
TETRA into broadband solutions, and enabling migration
from (future) TETRA to broadband.

To minimise the work required and to optimise the
standardisation process, the plan is to enhance existing
standards for technologies, such as LTE™ and 5G, by the
development of interfaces and applications, to make
them suitable for mission-critical applications. We are
therefore developing an architecture encompassing a range
of application layer interfaces to LTE, defined in a set of
Technical Specifications (TSs). In 2016 we began to revise the
TS which covers the mobile to network interface architecture
of a critical communications application operating over a
broadband Internet Protocol interface. We also began to look
at extending our work to interfaces to 5G. In addition, work
is ongoing on the detailed specification for the mobile to
infrastructure interface.

We revised our Technical Report (TR) on the user
requirements specification on interworking between the
Critical Communications Application and TETRA and on
migration of services from TETRA to broadband (LTE).

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