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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."
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 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.
This year's Smart Radio Challenge is quite similar to this initiative http://www.radiochallenge.org/09SampleProblem.html
What's wrong with HAM fanatics? They were geeks before geeks were cool. I remember my Dad bouncing radio signals of the Moon. That was cooler than Christmas.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
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.
Because 800Mhz isn't practical everywhere.
Put an 800Mhz system in the Texas Hill Country...you'll end up with needing a repeater site on every other hilltop.
Put an 800Mhz system in where there's lots of pine trees. You'll discover that pine needles are about 1/4wave long at 800Mhz and make excellent attenuators.
You're just still pissed because you cant pass your license exam.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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
"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
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.
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.
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.
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.