Airwave invited to contribute to SALUS PPDR research project

“Using our public safety knowledge and expertise, Airwave will be able to influence the direction of public safety communications of the future whilst at the same time work with other industry leaders and academic experts in this vital area of communications,” said Euros Evans, Airwave CTO.

The SALUS project brings together a consortium of global corporations, operators, SMEs and PPDR users, together with renowned research organisations and universities who have a proven record in contributing to scientific developments in the industry.

“We will contribute intelligence based on our significant understanding of the exacting operational and service requirements of public safety customers for their critical voice and data communications. Our input will ensure that the scenarios and case studies accurately reflect the requirements of the PPDR communities today and into the future,” concluded Evans.

The SALUS Project aims to develop and prototype the next generation PPDR network and services for public protection and disaster relief that is backward compatible with legacy communication technologies, fully converged with the 4G evolutionary wireless paradigm and supporting robust and reliable transmission of broadband data.

This task is supported by network operators and industry, which will provide security, privacy, seamless mobility, Quality of Service (QoS) and reliability support for mission-critical PMR voice and broadband data services.

The goals of the SALUS project are to:

• Design, develop and validate the next generation PPDR network concept;
• Support (via porting functionality) TETRA and TETRAPOL functionalities;
• Provide guidelines towards the medium/long term evolution of the PPDR network;
• Set out economic implications and possible migration paths for the PPDR network and service evolution;
• Collect statistical data related to police forces and first responders across Europe;
• Foresee business cases associated with the evolution of the PPDR network;
• Contribute towards the standardization efforts on the next generation PPDR network (including architectural design and spectrum requirements).

The SALUS vision is to enable robust, reliable, and secure mobile broadband communication for a wide variety of PPDR applications, including the ability of inter-system, inter-agency and cross-border interoperability.

The project coordinator is the Instituto de Telecommunicações; the other participants in the project are:

• Cassidian
• Rohill
• Airwave
• Fraunhofer
• Twente Institute for Wireless and Mobile Communications
• OneSource
• University of Ljubljana
• Kingston University London
• University of Patras
• Ubitel
• University of Belgrade
• Public Safety Communication Europe Forum
• Alcatel-Lucent
• Emergency Services College Finland

If you would like to know more about SALUS, please read the article that was written in LTEFlash magazine or visit the SALUS website.