TETRA  |  2017-02-16

ISITEP Tetra-Tetrapol 'Joint Surveilance Patrol' Demo Closed

Source: ISITEP

The ISITEP “Joint surveillance patrol” has been the last performed ISITEP demo. The goal of this trial was to demonstrate how Portugal-Spain police cross border cooperation could be improved resorting to ISITEP framework.

Currently, “the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic on border cooperation on police and customs matters agreement” signed in 2005 by Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic, regulate the cooperation between the two countries.

The law enforcement agencies of the two countries share, along borders, 8 Police and Customs Cooperation Centers (PCCC). Their main activities are the collection and exchange of relevant information, the prevention and suppression of the criminal activities in border areas, in particular, those related to illegal immigration, human trafficking, drugs and weapons, the support for surveillance and crimes’ persecution and the coordination of joint measures for patrolling the border area. The officers work together remaining subjected to the own applicable laws developing land, sea or air mixed patrols, establishing operations of mobile controls and performing joint researches.

The competent authorities may agree to conduct joint patrols and mobile controls consisting of agents and officials of both parties in areas of fifty kilometres from the border. In this context, communications are enabled by the integration between the two networks SP SIRDEE (TETRAPOL) and PT SISREP (TETRA) through B2B TETRA-TETRAPOL radio gateways deployed in areas of overlapping coverage that allows patching of Republican National Guard and Guardia Civil radio groups.

The ISITEP demo aimed to show the technically feasibility of connecting a TETRAPOL system to a TETRA one, using open interfaces like the published and well known interface CC-API, on the TETRAPOL side and the standard TETRA ISI, over IP interface on the TETRA.

Originally, the “Joint police surveillance patrol” was meant as a trial demo. The initial intent was to use the TETRA ISI over IP to TETRAPOL gateway developed in WP43 to interconnect the two networks in the real scenario. However, for such operational context, a gateway would required a level of stability, flexibility, configuration and management that a proof of concept prototype, like the one developed in WP43, cannot deliver. For this reason, the demo design has been reformulated for:

  • showing different technical options for interoperability of TETRA and TETRAPOL based on technology developed as part of ISITEP framework
  • giving a perspective to the interested end-user represented by Advisory Board members, on how the proposed technology could im- prove operational efficiency when used in the field.

The demo has hence been realised in laboratory. Since procedures between involved agencies are already in use and periodic training sessions are organised between end users, the trial aimed to demonstrate the use of technologies to support the procedures and assess the benefits that can be taken from the innovation developed within ISITEP framework, such as:

  • Interconnection of TETRAPOL and TETRA networks through TETRA- TETRAPOL ISI over IP gateways.
  • TETRA-TETRAPOL voice migration through the Enhanced Terminal.
  • ISITEP Value added apps (Workflow, Enhanced Mes- sage Exchange, Semantic Syntactic Translator).
  • ISITEP tools: Dimensioning Tool, Operation Cost Estimation Tool or Operations Training Tool.

In the demo have been directly involved two main agencies, the Spanish Civil Guard & National Police and the Portuguese Republican National Guard, that had the task and the opportunity of orienting the development of the demonstrator to solutions they can benefit from.