tetra association congress, fort...
TRANSCRIPT
Why TETRA?
TETRA Association Congress, Fort Worth
Duncan Swan, Partner
Analysys Mason
08 September 2011
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Contents
Business challenges
So many technologies to choose from…
Other digital technologies
Use of public networks
So, why TETRA?
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Business challenges
Public safety, transport and utility organisations all need mobile
communications to deliver their services
Secure communications and interoperability between users are
determining new solutions
Legacy analogue systems are reaching end of life, and will not be
supported by suppliers forever – but new analogue systems are still
coming to market
Digital networks are generally more complex and costly than analogue
systems – the balance between cost and functionality/coverage needs to
be carefully considered
Service improvements are being realised through the deployment of new
mobile applications, but these require data connectivity
There is a wide choice of technologies that support mobile
communication requirements – but which to choose ?
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So you want a PMR system?
Analogue conventional and trunked
FM Conventional, MPT1327 systems, EDACS (Ericsson), Smartzone
(Motorola)
Digital conventional
DMR (Tier I and II), dPMR & NXDN, Project 25
Digital trunked
DMR (Tier III), Project 25, TETRA, TETRAPOL
Digital cellular and variants
CDMA-PAMR, GSM-ASCI, GSM-R, iDEN
There is a huge range of proprietary solutions…and a smaller
number of open standards, of which TETRA is one
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London – a city of different technologies
Public Safety: TETRATaxis: GPRS/3G Buses: MPT1327
Building sites:
DMR/dPMR
Underground: TETRA Mainline Rail: GSM-R
Source: FreeFoto.com
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And what do you want to do with the system?
Identifying key requirements will quickly derive a technology short list
spectrum & regulatory approval
coverage and capacity
security
interoperability
resilience
set-to-set operation (direct mode)
multi-vendor
voice requirements
data requirements
support control room applications (GIS, CAD, dispatch)
Open procurement helps achieve a technology short list – and
vendor choice and competition for open standards
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ETSI is one of the leading standards bodies developing open
industry standards
What’s in the ETSI digital radio toolkit ?
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ETSI has four digital mobile radio standards…
Each of these standards started life with specific target markets and user
requirements to meet
And they all have very motivated user groups…
But there is a degree of cross-over between the standards and this has led
to ‘competition’
TETRA has been defined by ETSI to meet the needs of the most
demanding professional mobile radio users
and its variants – GSM Push-to-Talk and GSM-R
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A quick look at DMR
DMR comes in three flavours, and is seen as a digital replacement for
MPT1327 for ‘business critical’ rather than ‘mission critical’ users…
Tier I
Peer-to-Peer mode
intended for 446MHz, unlicensed operation
Tier II
operation through a base station or repeater
peer-to-peer mode
generally for operation with licensed spectrum in VHF & UHF
Tier III
a trunked radio network plus functions of Tier I & II
but it’s taking a long time for suppliers to bring product to market…
Vocoder standardisation is not in the standard – but there is agreement in
the DMR Association to use a common vocoder to ensure interoperability
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Interoperability between manufacturers of
equipment is a key requirement in
maintaining a competitive landscape – how
do the standards measure up?
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Interoperability – a key consideration
Snapshot of
core TETRA
interoperability
testing
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“DMR Association Announces Completion of Successful
Interoperability Testing and Further Test Sessions
LONDON, UK – 07 March 2011 – The Digital Mobile Radio (DMR)
Association today announced the successful completion of a further DMR
Interoperability (IOP) test session which took place in Milan, Italy on
January 24 and 25, 2011.”
Interoperability – a key consideration
“dPMR® MoU Completes a Successful IOP Testing
Session
MALDON, UK – April 13, 2011 – The dPMR® MOU group is pleased
to announce the success of recent IOP Testing – Formal and ad-hoc
testing sessions were held with equipment from Icom, CML and EIL.
This brings the number of manufacturers that have performed
interoperability testing to four.”
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Interoperability – a key consideration
US Department of Homeland Security – SAFECOM initiative
List of P25 SDoCs – generally tested against four infrastructure providers
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APCO Project 25
P25 as a standard is excellent at supporting backwards compatibility
providing a migration path from analogue to digital
Multi-vendor – market prices are dropping (but more expensive than TETRA)
Offers a mix of solutions (conventional, simulcast, trunked etc.)
Supports secure communications from radio terminal to dispatch
FDMA does not have the same distance constraints as TDMA in relation to
synchronisation – ensuring a lower cost solution where coverage and not
capacity is required
As with TETRA, there are mandatory functions, as well as options that
suppliers can choose to design into their solutions, and the option for
manufacturer-specific features to be offered
As is the case with TETRA, IP technology is underpinning P25 bearer
networks, improving network resilience and flexibility
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High-level comparison…
Supports a range of user groups,
including public safety, urban
transport, and rail – and also
provides a good platform for multi-
user managed service offerings
Build from scratch and do not
expect to be able to use any
elements of current mobile radio
systems – revolution!
The standard has options for
different configurations
Mature multi-vendor environment
Generally in UHF bands
Public safety focus, but would suit
needs of other ‘orange light’
groups and utilities
Has been written with a clear
migration path from analogue
radio systems through to digital
radio systems – evolution!
Can be conventional, simulcast, or
trunked – a range of options to
suit a variety of user needs all
under the one air interface
Multi-vendor environment
continues towards maturity
Available in VHF and UHF
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Protected 7.2kbit/s data channel
using single timeslot – multi-slot
increases this to 28.8kbit/s
maximum
Good telephony functionality
Over-the-air encryption as
standard
TETRA subscriber products are
world-class in their design
Has developed some excellent
data-centric products with TETRA
PDAs, very accurate location
systems, etc.
Protected 9.6kbit/s data channel
Telephony functionality might be
available
End-to-end encryption as standard
Subscriber equipment more
limited in ergonomic terms in
comparison to TETRA
Behind in terms of integrated
applications across subscriber
equipment (GPS, handheld
functionality)
Both support similar voice functionality – the
differences are elsewhere…
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The power of TETRA for data applications
- airport logistics
TETRA is an enabler for improving efficiency
at airports
One example – used by a number of airlines
at Heathrow – is:
Flight number becomes the name of user
talkgroup
Resources can be dynamically assigned
to talkgroup
Workflow, task reporting, airport
information & picture messaging…
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The power of TETRA for data applications
- bus companies
Applications are successfully overseeing
many millions of passenger journeys on
buses across the world…
Vehicle sensors reporting fuel, engine
health, etc
Passenger information signs – real time
information
Location information to manage bus flow
Use of multiple secondary control
channels to maintain short data
throughput – e.g. Barcelona Buses
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The power of TETRA for data applications – subway
& light-rail operation
London Underground – RFID tags for location tracking and talkgroup
selection
Train receives
address of
RFID token in
track
Position (tag ID) reported via
TETRA network and
appropriate talkgroup for
location selected
automatically
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The GSM family
There has been a significant and well documented lobby over the years to
champion GSM as a credible alternative to TETRA for national public
safety solutions
And work undertaken to prove and disprove that one technology is better
than the other…
But there is a real place for public cellular networks – especially GPRS and
3G – alongside mission-critical PMR systems such as TETRA
And TETRA and GSM-based technologies have competed head-to-head in
the rail market where…
TETRA has had significant success with urban transportation projects
– buses, metro systems and light rail
GSM-R, the GSM technology derivative for the railways, is the leading
standard for national railway systems
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Public network technologies have a number
of key shortcomings for voice communications…
Call set-up times are not yet acceptable for professional mobile radio
communications
Cellular push-to-talk systems require too many channels to support
reasonably sized talkgroups
Out-of-network set-to-set coverage (direct mode) is an issue
The ability to support any level of reasonable dispatch functionality is an
issue
Public cellular systems cannot provide mission-critical voice
communications – but may have a role for data…
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The role for public networks in providing non-
mission-critical data services
GPRS and 3G services are already widely used for non-critical
applications
faster data rates
BlackBerry use of GPRS with small packet size is very efficient
The link can be encrypted, if data security is important; but the device also
needs to be considered when determining security requirements…
Dual bearer operation can be used to protect against the failure of one
network
And the advent of networks supporting LTE is fuelling the debate between
using public networks for broadband data and implementing stand-alone
private networks
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What is the TETRA community doing to
address wideband and broadband data needs?
TETRA enhanced data services (TEDS) provide add-on data rates up to
154kbit/s in a 50kHz channel (wideband < 1Mbit/s)
At present, TEDS has to work with TETRA control channels
a stand-alone TETRA data-only standard (direct access TEDS) is
actively being developed
TC-TETRA Working Group 4 (WG4) is looking at broadband solutions
(> 1Mbit/s), and may leverage commercial technologies
looking at LTE, WiMAX, and also an evolution of TEDS with wider
channels
And the industry is now looking at deploying LTE (Alcatel Lucent &
Cassidian) or WiMAX (Thales) networks that support TETRA as an
application to facilitate voice and broadband data…
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In summary – what are TETRA’s strengths?
It is more frequency efficient than
other technologies – but the
advantage is being eroded…
It has excellent voice functionality,
and ably supports mission-critical
data services
It leads the way in managing an
open standard through
transparent interoperability
certification
The vast majority of TETRA
networks have a mix of supplier
equipment – few networks using
other standards are currently
multi-vendor
Competition has enabled rapid
progress in developing subscriber
equipment, hand-portables and
accessories – and ensures
competitive pricing
TEDS has already been brought
to market – and indications
suggest that most new equipment
will be delivered TEDS ‘ready’
The TETRA Association has
worked closely across the industry
to ensure that standards work has
flowed smoothly – reducing time
to market
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In summary – what can TETRA continue to learn?
Multi-mode operation
TETRA must ensure that future technologies can springboard from the
current TETRA implementations – by way of comparison P25 derives
much of its success from supporting multi-mode platforms
Evolution not revolution !
Network/technology convergence
No one technology can be best at doing everything – TETRA solutions
need to continue to show how future technologies can work alongside
TETRA to provide even stronger feature sets
Continue active promotion across the global PMR user community
TETRA is certainly an open standard – and a mature standard – but one
that has huge support to ensure that it does not just stand still; hopefully
this point will come across in abundance today…
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Duncan Swan
Analysys Mason Limited
www.analysysmason.com
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