Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Slice of the spectrum

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 16:00:01 -0400

08/02/04; Vol. 23 No. 21

Slice of the spectrum

By William Jackson
GCN Staff

D.C.’s fledgling network for first responders underscores the bandwidth
battles

The District of Columbia is ready to launch a 10-site, citywide
broadband mobile network that will give first responders high-speed
access to video and data.

“This is a pilot network,” Robert LeGrande, the district’s deputy chief
technology officer, said last month. “We have one transceiver site up
and working. The other nine sites will be operational [in August].”

The IP network will be the first of its kind in the nation. Police, fire
and rescue personnel will have up to 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth to access
video feeds and remote applications on notebook computers, personal
digital assistants and, eventually, cell phones.

The one-year, $2.7 million pilot is more than a test of technology. The
city is part of a coalition hoping to demonstrate the value of the
applications—and the need for additional radio spectrum.

Not available

“We need to have 1 Mbps throughput,” LeGrande said, and right now public
safety agencies do not have the spectrum available.

A chunk of bandwidth in the 700-MHz band now used by television
broadcasters is scheduled to come on the market soon, and the Federal
Communications Commission is planning to auction it to commercial users.
The Spectrum Coalition for Public Safety wants 10 MHz of that band set
aside for public safety.

Broadcasters will be giving up the band as they move to digital
broadcasting, expected by the end of 2006. FCC plans to auction the
bandwidth currently are on hold.

“We’re concerned about the future of the spectrum,” LeGrande said.

Washington’s network has an experimental license issued in March by the
FCC. The commission wants to make 12 licenses in the 700-MHz band
available to commercial users in each of six geographic regions. That
includes six licenses in the 10-MHz-wide C block and six in the
20-MHz-wide D block. A 10-MHz swath in the middle of the band already
has been set aside for public safety use, but the coalition is lobbying
for an additional 10 MHz in the C block.

Contracts were awarded in December to Motorola Inc. as the systems
integrator and to Flarion Technologies Inc. of Bedminster, N.J., for
equipment.

Flarion is providing mobile air interface technology called FLASH-OFDM
(Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff-Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing). The system’s heart is the RadioRouter, a
packet-switched base station that will route signals to the city’s
DC-Net, an OC-48 Synchronous Optical Network. Base stations will be
linked to DC-Net edge routers by T1 lines.

The system will provide on-street coverage initially, with some
in-building coverage later.

FLASH-OFDM wireless network cards are available now for notebook
computers and handhelds, and chip sets for cellular phones are expected
by next year, said Ronny Haraldsvik, Flarion’s vice president of global
marketing and communications. Because the system is IP, users will be
able to access legacy databases and applications without modification.

Maximum download speed would be 1.5 Mbps, but the average user
experience is about 1 Mbps, Haraldsvik said. Uplink speed is 300 Kbps to
500 Kbps, with bursts up to 900 Kbps possible. Uplink and downlink use
channels of 1.25 MHz each.

Quality-of-service provisions let administrators prioritize applications
or access by individual user, department or other criteria.

Latency typically is a problem in IP over cellular networks. Haraldsvik
said latency in the Flarion system is no more than 50 milliseconds,
which can support streaming video and voice over IP.

“We want to start with the things we are at risk for in this city and
enhance our response to these,” LeGrande said. “We want to work with our
bomb squad to get them remote video ca- pability.” The hazardous
material team will have remote access to sensors around the city to
detect chemical, biological or radiological threats.

The network also will beta test Motorola’s Greenhouse Project, a
high-speed public safety data application that enables wireless video,
voice and data transmissions over IP at speeds of up to 468 Kbps.

Limited applications

LeGrande said the city does not anticipate moving its traditional voice
communications to the new wireless network. He said initial applications
on the network would be limited.

“We just completed a $40 million upgrade of that,” he said. The upgraded
system improved coverage inside the District’s buildings and Metrorail
tunnels, and added 63 vehicle repeater systems. “It’s my belief the
District of Columbia has one of the best, if not the best,
communications systems in the country.”

http://gcn.com/23_21/news/26799-1.html

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