Mission-Critical Devices and Networks: Built to Withstand the Heat
When it comes to supporting mission-critical communications in an emergency, commercial networks and devices are just not designed for the job.
As the budgets of many municipalities continue to shrink, public safety budgets are taking a hit. That means that the chief technology officers (CTOs) of some cities are now asking: “Do we really need a separate communications network and separate equipment for public safety? Can’t we just operate our applications across a commercial network?”
There are many reasons why commercial networks and devices simply do not support the mission-critical needs of public safety. In fact, in many cases, first responders could not do their jobs – and might actually lose their lives – without the specific functionality supported by mission-critical devices and networks.
“Mission-critical radios can really save lives when other infrastructure fails,” says Bob Schassler, senior vice president at Motorola. For instance, in September of 2008, first responders found themselves dealing with 100-mile-an-hour winds and flood waters 15 feet high as they struggled to help those stranded by Hurricane Ike.
“We suffered a lot of losses throughout the area. We lost utilities. We lost electricity. We lost local telephones. We lost cell phones,” says Fire Chief C.T. Anderson of the Santa Fe Fire Department. “But we were able to continue to operate without any fears because we had our radio system.”
During the February 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University, the public cellular network was saturated with students trying to call their loved ones, and “cell phones went down almost immediately,” says Chief Don Grady of the Northern Illinois University Department of Public Safety. “[Mission-critical] radios played an important role because all the first responders had to be advised of what was going on, where we were, what we were doing, how we got there and how they needed to approach. And all of that was done via radio.”
The bottom line is that “the requirements for priority access, redundancy, reliability and survivability for these [private mission-critical] systems are much greater than what is currently available in any commercial wireless network,” says Richard Mirgon, president of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International.
As just one example, public safety networks are built to withstand hurricane-force winds, and most have back-up generators at each and every site. In contrast, commercial mobile operators may decide that they cannot afford to include these features in their networks.
“The networks are designed for a different purpose. If there’s a catastrophic event in a certain region, there will be a spike in usage that could result in the cellular network becoming unusable,” Schassler says. “That’s when public safety responders need to communicate the most. It can’t be a ‘maybe it will work’ scenario.”
Mission-critical networks are vital for both voice and data communications. In both cases, high usage can quickly overload a network designed for commercial use. “As 4G technology networks become more prevalent, we will be faced with scenarios where many public safety personnel are on site at disaster or crime scene locations streaming video, which will result in inoperable or overloaded networks,” Schassler says. “Our public safety customers have told us, ‘We can’t afford for that to happen.’”
A Look at Mission-Critical Devices
Not only do mission-critical radio networks need to continue to operate when other systems fail, mission-critical devices also have several key features that make them better suited for disaster communications. First is the ruggedness factor.
“Mission-critical devices have to go where first responders go – whether that be into a burning building or into an ice storm in January,” says Richard Martin, senior product manager at Motorola. “We do crazy things to our radios and they survive, and to be absolutely sure we put them through an accelerated life testing regime that we believe is the toughest in the industry.”
Industry groups around the globe have spent years developing standards that can be used to categorize the ruggedness of public safety and military devices. These ruggedness standards test simple things such as whether a device will survive being dropped repeated times (which most commercial devices cannot) as well as more complex issues such as a device’s resistance to outside influences, including dust, water and temperatures.
For instance, the European IP65 standard indicates that a product is completely protected against dust and airport particles as well as against water jets that simulate the product being washed. The IP ratings are even higher if the product can withstand more difficult conditions.
Similarly, the MIL-STD-810F standard, published by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army, specifies that a product has been tested to withstand a variety of environmental conditions that users are likely to experience in the field such as extreme temperatures, humidity and vehicular vibration.
And although this ruggedized equipment can cost more in the short run, it can save public safety organizations a considerable amount of money in the long run. In fact, a study by VDC Research Group examined the costs of buying ruggedized public safety equipment over a five-year timeframe. And VDC found that buying ruggedized devices delivers a savings of about $2,000 per year thanks to reduced equipment failure and downtime – even though it might cost a public safety organization more to buy this equipment initially. See Tougher Than a Day at the Office story.
A Wide Array of Life-Saving Tools
Not only are public safety devices designed to operate in extreme conditions, they also have many life-saving features simply not found in commercial devices. For example, many Motorola mission-critical radios have a feature called “man-down” that senses when a first responder may be in trouble by monitoring whether the radio is in a vertical or horizontal position. In a “man-down” situation, the radio sends an emergency response back to the operator, and the radio’s location can be tracked using global positioning system (GPS) capabilities.
The radios also have a feature that allows a first responder to send an emergency signal without that signal being detected by those around him or her. If a first responder is on a surveillance mission, that individual can whisper into a mission-critical radio and still be heard. And many mission-critical radios are designed specifically to allow first responders to hear even in extremely noisy environments.
“Our mission-critical radios have special noise cancelling microphones and very sophisticated audio algorithms, specially designed for the extremely high noise environments public safety personnel are faced with, that are not built into cellular devices,” Schassler says.
Motorola’s mission-critical radios also support many other features commercial mobile networks simply do not. For instance, first responders can communicate using different “talk group” scenarios, where they might choose to communicate specifically to the firefighters at a scene with the click of a button. And when the push-to-talk buttons are pressed, the response is almost instantaneous. Motorola radios also support direct device-to-device communications, or “talkaround” communications, in areas where tower coverage is not available.
“If first responders are out in the middle of a mountainous area and there is no coverage there, they need to be able to communicate directly from radio to radio,” Schassler says. “That’s another example of a critical functionality required by public safety personnel that is simply not built into a consumer cellular device. With cellular, the signals always travel back through the base station.”
Different Needs, Different Networks, Different Devices
The responders on the front line know the importance of mission-critical communications because they have experienced the benefits.
“Our mission-critical radio system – our system that we rely on every day – was absolutely reliable before, during and after Hurricane Ike,” says Major Ray Tuttoilmondo of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. “When public safety workers need communications to work, the only thing that they can really rely upon is that solid, rugged, reliable, mission-critical, public safety grade radio that is hanging on their hip or sitting in their car.”
“Safety and effectiveness are the key issues there,” says Chief Doug Forsman of the Champaign Fire Department. “When you have a system that might or might not work or might or might not work well, it doesn’t measure up to the safety that we need for these hazardous environments for our employees and for the citizens we serve.”
“You can’t take a device that was designed for CEOs who are away from the office and still need to communicate and make that work for the fire service. It’s just not going to do it,” says Lieutenant Brad Bone of the Champaign Fire Department. “They are not going to be rugged enough. The battery life won’t be there. And exposing them to extreme temperatures and moistures is just not going to work out.”
The bottom line is that first responders rely on their ruggedized, mission-critical devices and their dedicated public safety networks – which are built to hold up during even the harshest of weather conditions – to help them save lives every day. Any first responder will tell you that communications devices and networks that are not specifically designed to withstand the harsh environment in which they work simply cannot deliver the reliability they need to protect the public.
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