Public Safety Communication

To provide the public safety community with a better understanding of what to expect from new and emerging networking technologies, and accelerate the standardization and utilization of such technologies.

What are the issues?

It is well known that first responders face significant problems with existing radio communication equipment. This is partly due to the lack of interoperability among the different types of radio equipment they currently use. As new wireless networks are being developed by standard developing organizations such as Project 25, TIA TR 8.8 IEEE 802, 3GPP, the main question is, are these emerging technologies suitable for public safety needs? And if the answer is no, then the question becomes: how can these wireless technologies be improved before they are deployed and become a critical part of public safety communications.

How are we addressing these issues?

Our goals are two-fold. First, we would like to provide the public safety community with the performance analysis tools needed to better understand emerging network technologies and facilitate:

• the evaluation of worst/best case network deployment scenarios,
• the investigation of how well new technologies support public safety requirements
• the development of quantitative requirements for public safety communications.

Second, our goal is to drive the development of next generation network standards in support of public safety communication needs and as determined by the first objective.

This work is supported by programs in the NIST Office of Law Enforcement (OLES) , the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

 

• Channel propagation models
  • 700 MHz Band Channel Propagation Model
    
• Network simulation models
  • Public safety broadband network
  • Mine mesh networks
  • P25 ISSI modeling
    
• Video quality characterization
• Indoor localization
• RFID interference measurement
• Prior work