The IIR PMR Summit and Professional LTE event in Barcelona to welcome more than 400 delegates

Today, Monday 17th September the first day of PMR Summit/Professional LTE 2012, organized by the IIR in Hotel Rey Juan Carlos & Congress Centre, Barcelona, was kicked off by a presentation performed by the DMR Association.

Throughout the day many workshops where done in order to let the audience understand the various possibilities of digital communications technologies like DMR and TETRA. On the other hand, during the workshops in the afternoon, the view of the visitor was asked about the use of broadband technology for mission critical usage.

DMR
The first presentation, started by the DMR association, was covering a generic overview of the DMR technology. The presentation, done by Christie Cant from TAIT explained the voice, data and other protocols used by DMR technology in more detail. Christie also mentioned the membership structure of the DMR Association and she made clear the the organization is growing at a rapid pace.

Alessandro Carelli (Product manager Selex Elsag) continued the presentation explaining the easy migration of analogue systems to Digital DMR technology, focussing on the migration of subscribers and infrastructure. He mentioned one again, that by using dual mode base stations, easy migration from analog to digital can be done.

It also was made clear that the DMR technology will frequently used in operations for Critical Communications, where TETRA, P25 and TETRAPOL are the preferred technologies for Mission Critical Communications, depending on the requirements of the end user.  

Just as in the TETRA communications industry, the DMR Association is very pleased that there are many companies (and still increasing) developing applications for DMR communications. One of the most used applications is location based management. The Association hopes to get more application development companies onboard, as time goes by.

The Association also clearly mentioned that DMR has been ideally designed to substitute Analogue FM systems because DMR has no complexity, needs no extra requirement, is power efficient, needs no extra space, has no new site issues, and no extra maintenance will be necessarily. In other words, and according to the DMR Association, DMR safeguards your investments.

The last presenter, Mario Michelli (Chairman of the DMR Association), explained more about the standard an the interoperability accreditation. Over the last years, the Association has reviewed the processes developed by the TETRA Association and completed with that specific knowledge, a well thought test process for DMR IOP (interoperability). One of the results is that features for DMR have been divided in mandatory- and optional features. Every manufacturer is free to test optional features.

The Association is very pleased with the process today. The IOP tests takes approximately 2 months for each accreditation, however this might change in the future, when the Association will count more than 40 to 50 manufactures.

TETRA
After the fist break, the TETRA and Critical Communications Association explained the goals of the Association. The Association currently counts over 150 member organizations from 35 countries and has several working groups.

The second speaker of the TETRA Association was Stefan Kvarnerås (CEO, RAKEL) discussing the markets and users of TETRA. According to Kvarnerås, it is important to have an open standard because of end user functionality to meet the needs of the end users. From an end user perspective Kvarnerås mentioned that the TETRA system is a great system for Critical Communications. The technology is efficient, secure and offers good competition. The only complaint is how the terminals and the system are working together. From experoience, nine out of ten problems is related to terminals, not the infrastructure.

Currently, the TETRA standard is mostly adopted in Europe. Second in place, and still growing rapidly, is the Asia Pacific region. Regarding the vertical markets TETRA is mostly used within the Transport sector (35%). Public Safety comes at a second place with a penetration of 32%. The military market is the smallest market with only 2%.

Furthermore, according to Kvarnerås, the benefit of the multivendor market is important. Mainly because of the wide choice of terminals, specialized products for specialized needs and lower prices. However a strange example of dividing the market amongst manufacturers can be seen in China. Two different metro lines in one city, are using two different TETRA systems from two different manufacturers, Cassidian and Motorola.

One of the last speakers during the morning session was Kees Verweij from VtsPN (Police The Netherlands) explaining more technical details about TETRA as as well as the possibilities in Security and Applications related to TETRA Communications. Verweij made clear that TEDS will still be seen as short and middle long term for data use over TETRA.

For tomorrow and Wednesday many other presentations and workshops are planned. The IIR expects to welcome more than 400 delegates from all over the world.

The event, will end on Wednesday the 19th September.

Source: www.tetra-applications.com