German BDBOS Publishes Funding Guidelines for the Public Safety Critical Communications Data Services Program

The funding guideline covers a funding volume of around 20 million euros.

BDBOS promotes projects for innovations in the broadband digital radio BOS of the future. The corresponding funding guideline have now been published in the Federal Gazette.

The announcement of the funding guideline of the first funding program of the Federal Agency for Digital Radio of Authorities and Organizations with Security Tasks (BDBOS) was published last week. In this way, the advantages of the 5G mobile radio standard and, in the future, 6G as well as edge and cloud computing are to be made usable for the next generation of digital radio.

"Our funding program is intended to pave the way for researching, developing and realizing suitable application options for innovative network technologies in mission-critical and mission-supporting areas," explains BDBOS President Andreas Gegenfurtner.

The funding guideline covers a funding volume of around 20 million euros. The announcement lists a total of 62 exemplary research questions in order to advance the research and development of next-generation digital radio as precisely as possible with specialized partners from business and science. Individual projects (exclusively companies) and joint projects consisting of scientific and economic actors are funded. In this way, the requirements for innovative products and services should be incorporated into the future development of the digital radio BOS at an early stage.

The aim is to supplement the tried-and-tested digital radio BOS with innovative data applications: The data collected and transmitted with current and future hardware, such as sensor, movement and connection data, audio, videos, photos or text, are to be evaluated by the BOS emergency services in real time and support decisions can be processed and used.

There will certainly be new device classes – such as smart devices and wearables – and complex applications. At the same time, however, it must be ensured that points of attack and security risks are kept as low as possible in order to be able to adequately meet the availability requirements. A comprehensive information and communication strategy is therefore part of the funding guideline.

"It is important to us that we let all our user groups participate in the development of the funding guideline in order to be able to align the next generation of digital radio with their needs," says BDBOS President Gegenfurtner.