Public Safety Radio: ETSI Standardizes Radio for Authorities

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The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has established a new committee for critical wireless communication networks. The TC CCS (Critical Communication Systems) committee is tasked with further developing digital radio standards for police, fire departments, emergency services, defense, transport, energy providers, and other critical infrastructure operators.

This involves both new specifications for broadband networks and the further development of the aging but robust TETRA standard. According to ETSI, the group's inaugural meeting took place on May 12 and 13 in Sophia Antipolis, France, the seat of ETSI.

TETRA remains, broadband is coming

The committee's goal is not to immediately replace and shut down TETRA. The European standard is used worldwide and is known for its robust voice communication. A significant advantage is also the Direct Mode Operation (DMO), which allows communication to continue in the event of a network failure.

However, TETRA offers only a few kilobits per second of data rate and is therefore of little or no use for modern applications such as sending images, videos, maps, and sensor data. However, this data has proven to be of enormous help in assessing danger situations and operational scenarios in recent years. More and more security authorities and aid organizations are digitizing their command centers and using, for example, quadrocopters and GPS trackers to maintain an overview.

The TC CCS is therefore to focus on creating standards and technical reports for narrowband and broadband critical communication. While this also involves the further development of TETRA, it primarily concerns more modern mobile communication technologies such as 5G and LTE. Compared to TETRA, these offer more bandwidth (a few dozen to several hundred megabits per second) even with comparatively narrow channels and are therefore better suited for the higher demands of digitization.

European System for Critical Communication

The committee is to prepare specifications for the planned European Critical Communications System, EUCCS for short, which is to be established by 2030. It is not intended to be a single central EU authority radio network. Rather, the goal is to make the communication systems of authorities and aid organizations in Europe interoperable – especially for cross-border operations. The EU Commission describes EUCCS as a system that connects the networks of European law enforcement agencies, civil protection, and public safety organizations.

TETRA also has approaches for inter-system communication with its Inter-System Interface. In practice, however, true roaming has remained rare because implementation, operation, security requirements, and authorization models are complex. Moreover, in addition to TETRA, other standards such as Tetrapol and DMR are in use.

Ultimately, EUCCS is intended not only to provide interoperable radio technology but also standardization regarding roles, priorities, security requirements, and operating processes. EUCCS is thus designed as a multi-layered framework for the cooperation of operational organizations.

Mission Critical Services over LTE and 5G

The technical basis for public safety radio via LTE and 5G will be the Mission Critical Services from 3GPP standardization. These include MCPTT for mission-critical Push-to-Talk voice communication, MCData for data, and MCVideo for video. These services are intended to transfer the characteristics of classic public safety radio networks to LTE and 5G environments: group communication, prioritization, secure authentication, and controlled usage even under high network load.

ETSI apparently sees a need for harmonization here. Even if national systems are based on 3GPP standards in the future, they will not automatically work together seamlessly. The new TC CCS is to bundle the requirements of governments, operational organizations, network operators, regulators, industry, and critical infrastructure operators and derive technical specifications and reports from them.

Public safety 5G/LTE networks are not necessarily to be created from this: EUCCS currently does not define a uniform operating model. National solutions can use dedicated, commercial, or hybrid infrastructures; the key factors are interoperability, prioritization, and secured mission-critical services. Belgium and Norway, for example, plan to use the base stations of commercial mobile operators but operate the core network themselves. They thus act like a virtual network operator without base stations. However, where commercial mobile operators do not provide coverage or have less capacity, their own antenna sites are still possible.

Ready for deployment by 2030

ETSI aims to prepare for the introduction of EUCCS by 2030 with its work. According to ETSI, more than 50 organizations from the critical communication sector gathered at the inaugural meeting of the new committee.

The chairmanship is taken over by Ari Toivonen from the Finnish network operator Suomen Erillisverkot. The deputies are Renaud Mellies from the French Ministry of the Interior for the broadband sector and David Chater-Lea from TETRA manufacturer Sepura for the narrowband sector.

(amo)