Will Wireless Save Public Safety?

Wireless stinks.
Del

In 1973 there was a terrible flood in North-Eastern Hungary. It damaged almost the whole communication infrastructure. That time we provided a HAM radio network for weeks in order to support the rescue teams.

I remember handling a ton of traffic out of Lubbock, Texas in 1970 after an F5 took half the city out. Fortunately hams were only used to relay good news like "We're all Ok" and "I made it to Dallas, don't worry". The bad news was handled by the Red Cross and MARS. Ran up quite a phone bill but the recipients were very, very grateful.

Is it still true that the various branches of the US military cannot communicate with each other in the field?

It is not the technology that determines the efficacy of your response activities, but, rather, the implementation and execution of whatever system one uses. If the police cannot communicate with the fire department which can not communicate with the National Guard which cannot communicate with federal coordinators (OK, maybe we don't need to worry about that last one for first responders), no amount of increased bandwidth or spectrum is going to fix the problem. HAM operators have been the key to establishing the first communications links in disasters almost since Marconi did his first trans-Atlantic transmission...

Unfortunately, I have never been able to pass the Morse Code test, so I can not contribute directly to this particular critical resource, but it deserves the full support of all of us. Our lives could depend on it...

Morse code is no longer a requirement, see http://www.arrl.org/.

Morse Code is no longer required for any class of Amateur Radio license. You should go for it!

The goal in emergency services is 1 portable radio per person. That put around 2,000 radios all trying to transmit at once. More than 10-15 people on a channel during a working incident starts to jam up communications. If the WTC was broken down into 10 separate sectors per building, it was still way too many people trying to communicate on too few frequencies.

sad thing is, most of these problems have already been solved in other technology areas, such as Ethernet messaging protocols and Operating System Message Handling...

What is required (imho) is a new kind of Emergency Communications Management System. First thing is a Message-Queue, (within each radio unit) which converts, digitally encodes, and stores audio messages, and then listens to the radio network, and submits the messages when the line is clear (in microsecond data bursts) You would be able to speak into the radio, after selecting a record mode, and give your message verbally. This would be converted to digital, and then put in the network queue, by switching to 'transmit' mode'. Receiving messages would be a third mode, which can receive and translate text and audio.. (the text mode ensures clear communications from hq.)

Then you have a Central Message Manager, (at the HQ, which converts the messages to text, and creates a time-stamped list of messages., The human managers would be creating Tasks and have a a list of resources (people, equipment, vehicles, etc.) which can be assigned to a given task operation. Messages from the field would also be assigned to a given operation to which they pertain, if possible. Operators at the HQ would be able to transmit digitally to specific units or groups, and receive confirmation that the message was recieved by that unit.. and maintain a continuous task based situational awareness.

By having all messages encoded digitally, and transmitted via an Ethernet style protocol, you eliminate 90% or more of the traffic, and increase the reliability and comprehension of the messages, while adding only slight changes to methodology of radio transmission. Now that people have become familiar with cell phone texting, this would not present much of a training hurdle, as the system would be similar. (but faster, as input is audio, and output is either.)

Chris

very insightful bob. ga.

Motorola has been producing multiband hand-held HAM radios for years...

When I was serving in Viet Nam, one of the radio stations I operated utilized commercial HAM equipment, because it was the only equipment available for single sideband operation. HAM's have the technological edge...

http://www.motorola.com/Business/US-EN/Business+Product+and+Services/Two-Way+Radios+-+Public+Safety/Digital+Mobile+Radios/APX+7500_US-EN

This is the radio that Motorola is pushing lately. I think the P25 is the upcoming interoperability function.

So auction off the airwaves to commercial companies so that they can resell it to the local municipalities at an inflated perpetual charge? No way! There would be no way to raise enough taxes to pay the commercial companies, especially after we're held hostage for any upgrades.