Airbus Defence and partners create first responders platform

Airbus Defence and its partners have presented first results of Long Term Evolution for Professional Mobile Radio (LTE4PMR), a French research and development project designed to provide mission-critical broadband services. This includes an advanced mobile video application.

The LTE4PMR project is based on the latest standards for mission-critical services (MCS) designed by the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). It is an accelerator in the standardisation, development and implementation of the specific products and features required to meet the needs for secure communication in the public safety sector.

The joint project team consists of Nokia, Sequans, the Institut Mines-Télécom and Airbus Defence and Space. It has set up a demonstration platform on the company’s Elancourt premises to find the best solutions for secure broadband communication. End users, including the French Ministry of Interior and the Paris city transit authority RATP, are involved in the demonstration to provide input on their operational needs.

“This project will help to shape the professional mobile radio (PMR) technology of tomorrow. It has to be a solution that takes into account both future standard requirements as well as customer needs in the field of public safety and in business sectors,” said Olivier Koczan, head of Secure Land Communications at Airbus Defence and Space.

“Our project also contributes to a more innovative European and French economy.”

A substantial amount of resources is being invested over a period of 27 months in order to accelerate the technical changeover to the next generation of PMR. Having been a leader in PMR technology since the 1980s, the French ecosystem for mission-critical communications is now preparing for market-ready PMR broadband products. With the conclusion of the LTE4PMR project at the end of 2017, a second operational scenario will be presented. It will show a comprehensive and interoperable set of mission-critical solutions leveraging commercial mobile broadband services as well as dedicated networks in 400 and 700 MHz radio frequencies.

Generally, the results of the LTE4PMR project provide typical PMR features, such as mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT), secured group data (MCData) and video (MCVideo) transmissions over shared and dedicated mobile broadband networks. The project also integrates and creates the relevant technology bricks, such as the base station, the core network and the terminal chipset. This enables the deployment of mobile broadband secure communication networks in various frequency bands and business models.

Since January 2016, Airbus Defence and Space has led the LTE4PMR project. The consortium consists of French telecommunication companies and universities, with the project partly funded by French authorities through the French Banque Publique d’Investissement (BPI) and the ‘Investissements d’Avenir’ program.

Image courtesy of Airbus Defence.