German BDBOS Starts Funding KoPa-45 - Mission Critical Broadband Activities

BDBOS to research advantages on 5G & 6G for mission-critical communication networks, as well as the possible use of edge and cloud technologies.

The BDBOS provides funds from the federal corona stimulus package for the development and testing of future technologies for broadband digital radio BOS. In addition, a separate broadband development environment will be created for research and testing.

The Federal Agency for Digital Radio of Authorities and Organizations with Security Tasks (BDBOS) is setting up a program as part of the newly launched KoPa_45 project to promote innovation for broadband digital radio. On the one hand, the advantages of the mobile radio standards 5G and, in the future, 6G should be made usable for mission-critical communication networks. On the other hand, the possible use of edge and cloud technologies in mission-critical areas are to be researched. The funding program is expected to start in the third quarter of 2022 and will run until the end of 2024.

The funds for the support program come from the economic stimulus package "Combating the consequences of Corona, securing prosperity, strengthening future viability", which the federal government launched in June 2020. In this context, funds from the 45th element of the economic stimulus package were allocated to the BDBOS for the targeted promotion of the economy in its area of ​​responsibility.

In order to prepare and align the content of the funding program, BDBOS has worked out research questions in the past few months that are of interest with regard to future broadband mission-critical mobile radio networks. The target group includes, for example, research institutes, end device manufacturers in the field of public safety, network operators, measuring device providers, providers of control centers and mobile base stations, software and application providers as well as system component manufacturers and module manufacturers, but also cross-sectoral sectors such as the (industrial) Internet of Things.

For the testing of ideas and products, the BDBOS provides its own broadband development environment with LTE, 5G and - if available by the end of the project - 6G technology from project funds. The transitions between networks of different technologies, in particular to the TETRA standard of the digital radio BOS, should be able to be simulated with it. The development environment is provided as a stationary and mobile campus network and contains the technically necessary equipment for mission-critical broadband services (MCx) as well as an interface for network coupling with the TETRA part of BDBOS' own test platform. In this way, the network conditions to be expected can be simulated as far as possible in broadband digital radio beyond 2030. The structure allows extensive testing both in a 5G environment with a bandwidth of 100 MHz and by means of backward compatibility in the LTE area.

Further information on the project and the funding program is regularly published on the BDBOS website.