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US Sets Up Emergency Multi-Band Radio Project
coondoggie writes "Looking to help eliminate the dangerous and inefficient hodgepodge of communication and network technology used by emergency response personnel, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today said it had picked 14 groups from across the country to pilot an ambitious Multi-Band Radio project.
In 2008, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate awarded a $6.2 million contract to Thales Communications to demonstrate the first-ever portable radio prototype that lets emergency responders — police, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and others — communicate with partner agencies, regardless of the radio band they operate on."
Dons tin foil hat... Can it read brain waves too?
New government program to make us safer, managed by Homeland Security? This can only end in a very expensive disaster...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why don't they add in an analogue television signal?
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
The capabilities described seem to be no greater than (modified) ham radio gear. I simply don't see what all the fuss is about. Commercial products are __far__ cheaper and far easier to assess the bugs, including "birdies". (If you've ever used a spectrum analyser you why there called birdies. :)
Why don't they just use TETRA?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Trunked_Radio
Why don't they ask the group who has been using multiband equipment for several decades. Amateur Radio operators. They have radios that operate from below 1 MHz to over 1GHz. They have been doing (without pay) emergency radio communications for a very long time now.
Cue the chorus of HAM fanatics appearing from out of the woodwork in 3, 2, 1...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Does anyone more familiar with the system or the DHS project know if there's any advantage to pushing this new system versus pushing a complete transition to a 800Mhz trunked frequency? It seems like many agencies are just now transitioning to the 800Mhz band to provide the same type of interoperability.
This year's Smart Radio Challenge is quite similar to this initiative http://www.radiochallenge.org/09SampleProblem.html
Why don't they ask the group who has been using multiband equipment for several decades. Amateur Radio operators. They have radios that operate from below 1 MHz to over 1GHz. They have been doing (without pay) emergency radio communications for a very long time now.
Because it doesn't involve a really bloated government contract with some DoD favorite that has obscenely paid lobbyists, with state-of-the-art equipment that has serious design issues but lots of shiny digital displays and lights and switches, that you can drop 5 stories and it STILL doesn't work right.
No joke. That's why.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The Department of Homeland Security only gives the kiss of death to public works projects. Here's what's going to happen; A bunch of committees will be called, and they're going to make a whole bunch of suggestions about what it "should" do. Each organization will want to have at least one feature included, a vote, etc. Tens (possibly hundreds) of millions will be lost doing this. It'll be filed under "R&D costs". At least a third of those suggestions will be crap or impossible/unfeasible to implement. It'll be recycled a few times on the General Schedule before some hapless corporation wins the contract. Then all hell breaks loose as delays in the project force reductions in scope, and the process of defining "core features" begins. By this point, everyone will be pointing fingers, and it'll be half-implemented and broken in many places. The project's surviving assets will be quietly transferred after a GAO inquiry regarding cost overruns and lack of deliverables -- just ahead of a congressional committee being called on the matter. Two years later, someone gets the idea that the US should have a multi-band radio project...
I only say this, because they've tried it with different scopes over and over and over and over again. Their technology department is understaffed due to high turnover and leadership problems.
Fundamentally, these things never leave the pilot phase, or if they do, they face deployment problems because the requirements are so obtuse and ambitious that existing technology can't adapt. Even if it can, bureaucratic problems usually end a project before it sees wide-scale deployment due to reluctance to adopt new technology and failures in leadership -- namely, not communicating with people in the field before trying to put something there.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Yeah, good luck with that. If it succeeds, it'll be a portable radio that costs $10K. It'll have to license P25 and SmartNet from Motorola, a couple of protocols from EF Johnson, have MPT1324 (The only real open standard in commercial radio), it'll need wide and narrow band coverage of 150, 450, and 800Mhz.
Sure, it can all be done with a DSP based radio, but someone's gotta pay for the Intellectual Property to make them work.
Oh, what a glorious way to waste tax dollars. First design a system, then require everyone to get on board with it. Price it through the roof and have a single vendor for all the gear. So some volunteer fire dept in Iowa that is on a shoestring budget has to spend thousands to upgrade radios. It will take years if it ever gets off the ground. This is _WHY_ amateur radio works, government has too many silos and too many important people that will push their system. Been there seen that, still paying the price. :(
Millions to do what Ham radio operators have been doing for decades.
Set up a portable cross band repeater.
Nice. Glad to see the Government is still being stupid with money.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And fewer bands to jam.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
HAMs are allowed to encrypt according to a protocol than can be decrpted by a readily available, published method. The exception to this is for satellite control signals, which can be encrypted however. And this is one reason why morse code (CW) is often used with emergency communications. Many amateurs involved in emergency communications know it, btu the general public passing by won't know what all the dots and dashes mean.
As a fire officer, I work closely with several other nearby towns. We are all on different radio frequencies. There are strategies to work well that mitigate the potential issues:
1. For neighboring towns, we have each other's frequencies available on our own radios.
2. When operating more distantly, we use a state wide non-repeated frequency for larger incidents to cover the incident scene, while operations command will use their repeated systems to communicate out to dispatch or with other agencies.
Number two is very important -- span of control is optimally at "5" (meaning you shouldn't be trying to manage more than 5 direct reports). At anything above 7 you become very inefficient. When the number of people you're trying to work directly with grows above that number you should be subdividing that span of control and instead talking to a single representation of each sector or division. ** That means, not everyone on scene should be attempting to communicate back to a central point at all once.
The modern public safety sector is all trained (or being trained) on NIMS (National Incident Management System). As an officer, I'm required to hold three different certifications within that program. Firefighters, police, ems workers, town managers, and public service workers (the town guys who fix things and make your city work) are all part of the program. The purpose of NIMS is to define and common and understandable method of managing incidents from the smallest (where I may have incident command at a car accident with one or two responding units) but that also scale up as needed to the very largest (e.g. I arrive on scene to find the reported car accident was actually caused by a train derailing and landing on the car, spilling toxic material into a river which crosses state lines). NIMS defines common language, common command structures, and even common paperwork standards for doing things like leasing a bulldozer to build a dike or a bunch of outhouses to use at a work camp.
My point is that the radio technology is only one challenge, and one that can be solved by working together in a well coordinated manner. More important is building and practicing the strategies to manage incidents in a coordinated manner.
If you're in the public safety sector and haven't had NIMS training yet, you will. It is rapidly becoming a requirement for any organization receiving federal grants or other funding. If you've heard bad things about it, ignore them. NIMS is actually fairly simple and uses good common sense strategies (e.g. drop obscure 10 codes and speak in plain language) for most of what it does. It is based on an incredibly successful management strategy used by the teams that run the huge wildfire operations. Their system used something like 1/3 the number of back end support people for every front line person when compared with the military.
For our department, about 90% of what NIMS requires was already very similar to what we were already doing. Very little had to change.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
First, if an agency is encrypting their communications, there's not much hope for any other service to talk to them, unless (obviously), they all share keys. It's doubtful, though, that the FBI is going to share their encryption keys with the local volunteer fire department. So, the assumption must be made that this solution is meant for unencrypted (which is not to say, unencoded digital) communications.
Secondly, hams are not prohibited from using encryption. Part 97.113(a)(4) prohibits "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning." There are reasons for using encryption other than to obscure the meaning - security of control links (i.e., not to obscure the meaning, but to protect that meaning from interference by others), etc., which are perfectly legal. Encryption has been used for years to protect the control links of ham satellites, with the FCC's blessing. One could use PKI to encrypt a message with their private key, and then transmit it over ham radio, provided the public key is, in fact, public, so anyone could decrypt the message.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"Radios were sent to -Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (Ottawa, ON Canada)"
Dear god. What are we going to do when we go to war with those french speaking queen loving northerners?! They will even be able to listen in on the Department of Defense frequencies! They will know our every move!
I demand that only DEFECTIVE radios are sent to Canada.
For maximum effect, I recommend that the radios only receive communications in the form of a poor impression of a Canadian accent- notably every word should be "Ay?"
(This post was a joke)
www.GrenadeHop.com
Many towns and cities have been burned by spending millions on a proprietary system only to discover they can't talk to the next town over.
It would be nice if the DHS actually did something useful and put an end to that kind of crap.
This article http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/09/b1029179.html from 2005 stresses the importance ans suggests using WiFi. Maybe. But the most important aspect is "one digital protocol to rule them all", no matter what band you're on.
And then picture Obama standing there posed like the Colossus of Rhodes as his nuts explore all over your adoring face, and he has a good laugh at your expense while you sing psalms to him and offer him burnt offerings. I've never heard of a ruler who has such contempt for their subjects since Marie Antoinette, while at the same time maintaining such loyalty. It's amazing, really. I wonder how long it will take for the last Obamabot to finally admit that change = more of the same with a double portion.
Use that money to buy more servers for Twitter
OutputLogic
I'm surprised that no one has yet pointed out the fact that Thales already released a multi-band radio called the Liberty, competitor to Motorola's APX7000. http://www.thalesliberty.com/
I'm a ham. We worked with an Airshow a few years back. We coordinated between NYSP (155 mhz), the local fire brigade (46 mhz), the County Sheriff (46? mhz). The ambulance crew was on still another frequency. While this clearly was not an emergency, the person between them all was a ham, relaying messages between the agencies. All the ham equipment at the main table cost less than one walkie talkie from the mighty motorola. Some cop cars will have channels from adjoining jurisdictions, but it is patchwork and if you are on VHF and your other agency is on UHF, there will have to be phone calls between dispatchers to co ordinate. See, an agency has a budget. They then get sold by Motorola the best and latest, no matter what the actual needs of the agency are. This results in everyone having different stuff as they all buy at different times. Once an agency gets working radio, they almost never change it, as it can be a life or death thing. Bureaucratic Ossification takes over. Here in NY, there was an attempt by Tyco to come up with an IP radio system. It was met with great distrust by the police and other agencies that were supposed to toss the patchwork radios and all use the MA/COM system. You can easier change a service pistol on cops than their radios. It is far, far too simple and cheap to designate a few VHF or UHF channels, in FM and have everyone program them in...we have to buy new equipment and re invent wheels. You don't need encryption for the vast majority of "interops". So, let's come up with a new system, at great cost...it is what Motorola is selling today. Whether you need it or not.
When you call it IRL Fallout, it only makes it sound that much more awesome.
Next year, I'll be sure to put the word out: "Come to Field Day! It is like Fallout in real life!"
The US Army and Navy had this problem...came to light during the Grenada invasion. If I remember correctly, a forward observer wound up calling in a naval artillery strike by phone via US operator because he couldn't reach the ship by radio. Might be apocryphal, but it rings true. That's when military radios became AN-PRC-77s, the AN standing for Army/Navy. Amazing it has taken the civilians another 25 years to even consider implementing this.
Kevin Jonas is getting married. That's one less little boy's anus for you to abuse.
Valuable spectrum 'just' opened up...when do you think it'll actually have 'real' value instead of 'we might do something with this'?
Well, if you had an amateur license, you could've used the 50Mhz band and played RC with the big boys. (You probably use the 72Mhz band like 'everyone else')
Ramsey Electronics has radio kits you can assemble.
As for technology? I'm guessing the Internet Radio Linking Project/WIRES will /probably/ be used somehow which means we can probably expect to see a 'national information infrastructure' within the next 20 years.
And does it have to be 20 years? Because I'm pretty sure Steve Wozniak is a Ham. And there are plenty of other notable hams out there making contributions all over the place. But true amateurs, such as yourself, aren't concerned with the actual technology. (or development) They just want to use it.
73s...
1. For neighboring towns, we have each other's frequencies available on our own radios.
I work for a local two-way radio shop and this happens all the time. But this isn't what they're meaning.
If you have a VHF system, you cannot talk to someone on UHF ... period. With the Thales' radio, you can, it has multiple bands built inside the radio.
I remember seeing this last year in a "what's new and upcoming" in a trade magazine, and they mentioned it could have VHF (136-174 Mhz) UHF1 (405-430 Mhz), UHF2 (450-520 Mhz), 700 Mhz band, and 800 Mhz band all in one radio.
So, if you as a firefighter runs on VHF, but the local PD runs 800 Mhz, you could both talk to eachother assuming one party had one of these radios.
2. When operating more distantly, we use a state wide non-repeated frequency for larger incidents to cover the incident scene, while operations command will use their repeated systems to communicate out to dispatch or with other agencies.
Again, this assumes everyone is in the same RF band. See above.
Wasn't this supposed to be part of the analog tv spectrum auction and it failed miserably?
Policeman: So, what is this thing we have here?
Engineer: It's a dual-band radio! See - here on one side of it, you have the normal frequency that you use as a policeman. And.. (flips device around) here you have the frequency used by the firemen! We spent $400,000 of tax dollars to develop this!
Policeman: So let me get this straight: I have two radios in one device!? It's bigger than my normal radio...
Engineer: Yes, that's it! Now you are no longer encumbered with just police communication!
Policeman: But it's like twice as big as my normal radio...
Engineer: Yes, but think about the convenience! Now you can communicate with the other departments!
Policeman: Departments? With an "s"?
Engineer: Well, if you want to talk with another department, like say....
Policeman: Medical?
Engineer: ... yeah - medical - you would need one of these! (pulls out even bigger box)
Policeman: This one is like three times the size of my normal radio! How much weight do you want me to carry around?
Engineer: Yes, but look at the quality! Each radio has its own independent volume and frequency knob! You can customize it to work the way that you want to!
Policeman: And, let's say I want to include the Highway patrol...?
Engineer: Got that too. Here's the four-band radio...
Policeman: BUT THIS IS EVEN BIGGER?!?! This is like four times the size of my normal radio...
Engineer: And each band has it's own volume knob, battery compartment...
Policeman: Say, you didn't just get four normal radios and tape them together, did you?
Engineer: Of course not! These radios are made to exacting standards -
Policeman: Yes you did! I'm peeling them apart now!
Engineer: Turns and runs while policeman chases him, throwing radio parts at him...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Part 97.113 says that "messages encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except as otherwise provided herein;" are prohibited. (Satellite control signals are one "otherwise" exception.) It doesn't say that "messages encrypted with a published key ..." are permitted, and encryption using a "published method" doesn't mean that the message can be decrypted. That's why it's encryption and not encoding. Blowfish is a published method. Blowfish without the key is obscured meaning.
The ones doing HSMM (High Speed Multi-Media, or 802.11b/g) publish the WEP key under the assumption that this is sufficient to avoid the prohibition. Clearly, the messages ARE being encoded to obscure their meaning, with the assumption that nobody but an FCC monitoring station would bother looking up the key and listening in. I don't think this has ever been tested with an official ruling. I don't think anyone really cares that much about such short range communications. In fact, ITU treaties now allow, and Austria (IIRC) has permitted, encryption on domestic traffic above 50MHz (typically short-range). The ARRL was going to ask for this here, but then backed down. I have yet to get an answer from anyone in ARRL staff why.
And this is one reason why morse code (CW) is often used with emergency communications.
No, sorry, CW is used because it can get through when voice or other modes can't, not because it obscures the meaning of anything.
Now, what IS used in emergency communications is FBB compression on packet radio systems (winlink 2000 systems, e.g.). THAT truly is "encoding" that everyone assumes is allowable because the protocol is published and thus not intended to obscure the meaning of the embedded message, even though many EMCOMM ops point to this "encoding" as security for the message. They want to have it both ways.
And this is the same government that people want making their personal health care decisions for them.
You will discover - at a certain age - if not before - that the government and the HMO are making the big decisions for you today.
The same government that issues Social Security checks to dead people, and sends 2 stimulus checks to others
Which - on balance - probably does less harm than the denial of a check to someone still living.
The US population over 65 is about 40 million.
If your employer is "doing business" on that scale - what is his error rate on accounts payable?
Every time I meet a worshipper of big government, I just want to slap them in their bitch mouth. Want to prevent another 9/11? Allow people with concealed-carry handgun permits to fly with their loaded handguns in the cabin.
You believe that big government will get everything wrong but the permit to carry a concealed weapon.
You are sandwiched into your seat - very awkwardly positioned - but still expect to pull off a quick one without killing the hostage.
This looks like a radio vendor grand plan to suck big bucks out of local governments across the land without actually solving the problem.
What is the incentive for a local PD or FD that is operating on, say, 39.58 Mhz or 46.06 Mhz, where these super-expensive, $6K handi-talkies conspicuously do not operate, to buy them? Zip, that's what - they would not be used without changing the entire remainder of their system over to one of the higher-frequency VHF bands, and - guess what - those frequencies are ALREADY crowded so that adding more users to it will increase interference between users which will diminish efficiency instead of enhance it.
So when the next disaster blows through an area, either a huge midwest tornado, or a coastal hurricane, a big earthquake wherever, it won't matter, there will still be a whole host of non-participants in the radio nets because there will not have been enough money to buy these super-expensive radios for the local VFD, or the small-town PD who's main function outside of the very rare massive regional emergencies is simply grabbing speeders that are passing thru and shaking them down for their operating expenses.
What they probably should be looking at is a versatile repeating system that DOES cover all bands including 30 - 50 Mhz, only needs to be bought for maybe 2 - 3 sites with very tall antenna towers in a county that would provide real value by linking their own PD and FD with other services, including possibly private survices such as mountain rescue and private ambulance, etc. and do so by simply buying a few radios that perform for all players.
In short, they need to work on the CHEAPEST solution to the problem, instead of the exact opposite which seems to be what they're doing here.
One thing that has always puzzled me about multiband public-service radios is how access to the various networks would be managed.
Traditionally, the reason agencies have different networks on different radio channels is for efficiency and security. By having separate networks, the firemen and the city road maintenance crews aren't bothered by each others' communications, nearly all of which are irrelevant to the other organization. It's easy to see that the policemen usually don't want to be bothered by the water utilities guys, and that the customs people don't want their communications overheard by local law enforcement (and, likely, vice-versa).
But, with a multiband, software-defined radio, the plan is for these types to be able to communicate with each other in emergencies. Fine -- but who lets whom on who's network, and when? If the local water utility guy in his truck sees a water main break underneath the local customs facility, how many layers of management will he have to work through to get his radio allowed on the customs network, and how long will that take? Technically, it's a trivial matter (once the radios are in the field, that is), but from an organizational standpoint I can see a big morass of internecine squabbling if this feature is to be used.
Then we got these new boxes that find the frequencies in use and let everyone talk on their native radios, except that they kind of don't work. Guys inside substantial (steel frame) buildings can't seem to talk to anyone. If the water hole is more than 1/2 a mile away, they're out of the loop too. And operations that you'd like to keep on their own frequencies like water supply or medical services get sucked into the network anyway. There's also the problem of too many people trying to talk on the radio at once and stepping all over each other. We do need a solution to this problem, but this isn't it.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
I remember seeing this last year in a "what's new and upcoming" in a trade magazine, and they mentioned it could have VHF (136-174 Mhz) UHF1 (405-430 Mhz), UHF2 (450-520 Mhz), 700 Mhz band, and 800 Mhz band all in one radio.
I don't see why that's so hard. I have a Kenwood TH-F7E which in "normal" form transmits on 144-146MHz and 430-440MHz. The TH-F6A is the American version which has band limits appropriate to the US and includes 220MHz operation. The same basic chassis is used for VHF highband radios covering 136-174MHz (M2/A0) and UHF low and highband (T1/U0), and probably some 200MHz-ish stuff. It's not a great stretch to imagine adding a 700-800MHz transceiver in there.
For £150 off-the-shelf you've got a hand-held transceiver that at least does FM on all these bands, with the ability to receive on two different bands simultaneously.
Why don't they add in an analogue television signal?
BTM
I think that is why they decommissioned the analog TV in the first place... Think of the money they saved by using the same frequency with the exisiting infrastructure in place.
sgtrock here, posting anonymously so I don't lose moderation points.
This is still a ridiculously expensive boondoggle. I was maintaining semi-portable multi-band radios when I was in the Navy back in the early '80s. Back then, those radios were already dropping rapidly in cost while becoming lighter, more capabile, and more power efficient. I can't believe we can't build these things with off the shelf parts for a few hundred bucks at most.
This is why the DoD funded the development of the JNN. We can do this and more with a JNN, guess what...we already have it. So the DHS is just wasting more of our money. Thanks guys, as if things aren't bad enough already.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
God Yes, NIMS training was by far the most useful and relevant training I've received in the fire service...in the current era, the problem with interagency communications is not *tech*, it's *rules*, and I was thoroughly impressed by NIMS' common sense, 6th grade reading level, scalability, and "rules for new rules". It's a very realistic framework that accomodates, among other things, the fact that you and everyone else has other things to do and to remember, that your personnel are going to have IQs from maybe 85 on up to 150, that if you don't figure out how everyone gets paid you can't figure out anything else, etc. I kid you not, FEMA's NIMS 100 (or -700) training is the best free mini-MBA you could give yourself. Pushing old, unsexy NIMS will do more than any amount of shiny radios or infinite numbers of useless "command center" RVs,
Yep, sounds like what my department does too.
One thing that our dispatch center added recently was bridge capability. They can bridge a variety of different frequencies and sources so that people with handhelds don't have to have new radios to talk to someone on a different channel. They can even bridge in phone calls to the command net on hazmat incidents, if we need to bring in State level resources
A couple years ago, DHS was offering a portable radio bridge device through their CEDAP program. Small police and fire departments were eligible to get free equipment. It would bridge between 8 different sources, ran off of AA batteries, would fit in a command rig. Acted as a local repeater if necessary as well. Sells retail for about 10,000. Much cheaper solution than replacing everyone's handhelds.
I was annoyed to see Boise Fire is part of the pilot program. They are the biggest department in my region. My department really likes our $300 Vertex radios, City Council would **** a brick if we asked them for 20 new $5,000 radios.
I did some more reading about this radios capabilities. On a small scale, 5 or 6 in my department might actually be useful. It appears that they have the capability to be teamed together to field assemble a local repeater or a bridge on the fly. There actually might be some use for that.
They also have a link on their website to sign up for a demo radio. I talked to my Chief and we are going to do exactly that. Maybe in a few months, I will actually get my hands on one and can do a full review.
But as an EmCommie I LOVE my command van!
I agree about NIS/ICS training, the 300-400 class was the best week of training I've ever had. About a month ago we had a DHS regional meeting on interop. Each group listed what systems they have. Boy, do we have issues! In our case, the state patrol is taking the lead to get interop figured for our region. Then we have a border with Canada.
tribalhams.net
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Admittedly that is a smartass remark, but it points out a huge problem and part of the reason why we have some serious failures.
Too much structure!
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
NIMS -- and programs like it -- seek to standardize and make interoperability more smooth. Before it, things happened because good people made them happen on the ground -- but it was less smooth.
Prior to the great Chicago fire, there were virtually no standards between departments on things like hose fitting sizes and thread types. You literally could not use one fire hose in another town.
The fire service has a long history of moving ever more in cooperation with its neighbors in new ways. It takes time, because there is never enough money. If it weren't for money, this would be a non issues. We'd all just move to a compatible radio system and be done. Money prevents that.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln