Public Safety LTE in the UK - 'Breaking the loop'

4GMax is the name of a new product that has been conceived to enable the emergency services to explore the benefits of high-speed data – live video streaming in particular.

From a certain perspective, 4GMax provides a taster for what an LTE future may feel like for the emergency services.

In simplified terms, 4GMax consists of a box which can support up to four SIM cards. It combines together the bandwidth from multiple commercial mobile networks, increasing the uplink capacity sufficiently so that for example a camera can transmit video from vehicles or – with an appropriate battery – anywhere with 3G or 4G signal. All data is secure because it can be encrypted and - in addition - no one commercial network carries all the data in transit and therefore no meaningful picture could be captured.

When installed in the back of a vehicle, 4GMax runs up to four mobile data connections in parallel, splitting data packets between networks to create a finished live video stream. As a vehicle moves between areas with different networks, it switches between data ‘pipes’, juggling data (not the technical term) to ensure that data integrity is maintained.

4GMax has been piloted by Surrey Police for the last 18 months, and the findings were presented during a demo day in February.

Andy Lloyd, ANPR Data Manager & Tactical Coordinator at Surrey Police, explained that the initial concept for the technology revolved around the application of police pursuit vehicle capability. In these scenarios, highly trained drivers are expected to conduct high-speed pursuits whilst communicating the scene to the control room. ‘With this technology we can communicate so much more. The operator in the control room can see what the police officer in the car can see, and the officer in the car can concentrate on driving.’ Fast time decisions can be taken with better on-scene information, and driver safety is enhanced.

The pilot investigating pursuit capability led Surrey to research other potential benefits for this technology, explained Andy. ‘We run ANPR teams, and ANPR vans that use data. The satellite dish on our vans is down now, it no longer gets used. We tried to use 3G dongles, but we had issues with moving data securely. This system removes those issues by providing a secure, permanent data connection. The information being collected is checked live against national systems – whilst previously the data was loaded on at the beginning of a shift.’

Surrey Police is already realising cost savings as a result of the ANPR trial, having cut down dramatically on satellite usage. ‘We have also increased our service level. Our satellite is low orbit, which affected where we could park our vans. But in Surrey 3G is abundant.’

A key consideration regarding 4GMax is that this is not a mission critical or – indeed - a resilient service. Euros Evans, Chief Technology Officer, Airwave, explained: ‘I don’t want to pretend that this is fully addresses mission critical resilience requirements. If we have a large power outage, and mobile networks fail as a consequence, it is out of our control. We are reliant on the commercial operators, unlike the TETRA network today.’ Nevertheless 4GMax has a number of tricks up its sleeve. It comprises a number of ports that can be used as inputs for satellite, for example. ‘It can use satellite as a pure source, but not in combination with others, as there is a latency issue with satellite, purely because the data has to go all the way up and down.’

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