Delivering the world´s first broadband Professional Mobile Radio system
Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) systems, both analogue and digital, use dedicated networks. Although theoretically these are standard-based, they cannot in practice interact with other vendor’s networks. With help from the EU, Genaker, the company behind the ShaMROCK project, has developed its Push-to-Talk (PTT) system from a service running on top of the mobile operators’ data service, to become the first to support quality of service and multicast over standard cellular networks. “An example of what that could mean in practice,” explains Mr Jordi Guerrero, CTO of www.genaker.net (Genaker), “is the case in which police officers wanting to share video with their operational coordinators and their team mates from the frontline of a demonstration, could not manage to get the video through because the network was saturated by all the smartphones connected from the crowd. Now the police and the emergency services will be able to use broadband instant group communications, such as video, even in these saturated areas.” Those tasked with our security depend on instant group communication. Genaker’s PTT is a key to providing this facility wherever it is needed, be that in government facilities or the telecom and energy networks in power generation plants, for example. But it’s not just the emergency services which can benefit. The solutions the team have developed provide chat messaging, file and image sharing, encryption, recording, geolocation and fast group creation and managing. The group’s innovative technology takes full advantage of the existing 3G/4G and 5G and integrates with them. “Professional customers often want a feature-rich service that allows them to have instant group communications over voice to, for instance, help one of the team members to carry a maintenance task. This can be used to share images of damaged parts. The support for real-time video, which allows more experienced colleagues to help work out the best approach to fixing the problem, is very useful.” The Spanish airline IBERIA has already replaced their TETRA radios in 3 airports with Genaker PTT. The local police in Cadiz and Almeria use Genaker PTT in crowded summer resorts where coverage is scarce. As Guerrero explains, the tramway in Seville has replaced TETRA communications with the Genaker PTT using an embedded module on board the trams themselves and mobile smartphones for the rest of employees. Mission Critical users’ needs go beyond requiring high availability, very fast communications and operation in saturated areas or in non-coverage situations. “In these cases, the benefit of the solution developed under ShaMROCK becomes even clearer. Features such as quality-of-service, multicast, direct mode and interworking with legacy radios provide the high availability and best network resources response time possible,” explains Guerrero. One such benefit that puts Genaker’s solutions ahead of the game is the ability to dynamically allocate a higher priority to certain users, groups or organisations. The speed, the stability of the bandwidth and reduced delay are also features that are of particular interest to first-responders and other Mission Critical users. Three pilot trials involved relevant potential customers and partners in different but complementary scenarios. Two of the pilots have already progressed to the commercial stage, and the third is close to its next phase. “With the inputs of the pilots, participation in industry events and through interoperability tests around the mission-critical, push-to-talk defined standard, we have been able analyse the work of our competitors and maintain our lead in the market.”
Keywords
ShaMROCK, telecoms, security, first-responders, PTT, radio, bandwidth, Genaker, Professional Mobile Radio
