As befitting the location of this year’s Critical Communications World (Dubai), the conference focussed heavily on work taking place in the Middle East.
The was apparent from the very first keynote sessions on the first day. These were delivered by Dubai Civil Defence’s head of command and control rooms, Suhail Mohammad Abualmaleh, and head of Nedaa, Mansoor Bousaiba. Their respective presentation titles were ‘Critical communication in the Middle East’ and ‘Critical communications outlook, Nedaa’.
The first day also witnessed another compelling session, during which Dubai Police’s head of operational communications, Abdulla Ahmed Saif Alafkham Alhammoudi, delivered a case study focussing on its use of mission critical communications technology.
He began his presentation by saying that he wanted to share his organisation’s “transformation journey,” which has seen it augment TETRA with broadband. Discussing this, he said: “As technology advanced, we started facing limitations such as bandwidth constraint and the [TETRA] system’s inability to support modern, data-intensive applications.
He continued: “Our journey to [mission critical] over LTE began in 2017. This transition involved extensive infrastructure upgrades, training and significant testing to ensure seamless integration with our existing systems. The outcome has proven its worth.”
Going on to discuss Mission Critical Push-to-Talk in particular, he stated that it has been necessary to roll-out hybrid devices to personnel. This ensured “no loss of our service during the transition.”
“With MCPTT over LTE” he said, “we have unified various platforms within Dubai Police into one integrated system. The unification has enhanced our operational efficiency, allowing for better coordination across different units and providing commanders with real-time updated [information] from the field.”
For those who watch the mission critical comms sector closely, it probably won’t be a surprise that Alhammoudi’s presentation not only provided an overview of Dubai Police’s efforts, but also a kind of stating of themes for much of the rest of the CCW 2024 conference. These included the changing nature of public safety operations, the use of hybrid devices, the adoption of mission critical broadband and more.
Focussing on the latter in particular, another compelling presentation from the first day was delivered by ETSI’s new chief technology officer Issam Toufik. The title of session was ‘3GPP and ETSI standardisation update.’
Outlining the current situation in relation to 3GPP releases and how this relates to the mission critical (and also commercial) sector, he said: “Release 15 and Release 16 have been submitted to the ITU [International Telecommunication Union] as the 3GPP 5G solution of the IMT 2020, and these two releases are the basis of the 5G commercial deployments that we are seeing today.
“According to the GSA there have been 308 commercial deployments so far and the majority of these are non-standalone [5G]. So, we are still to see the full potential and the promise of 5G.”
He continued by saying that Release 17 has also now been completed, with 3GPP now working on Release 18 which is the first release representing what’s known as 5G Advanced. Drilling down into R18 in particular, he said: “Release 18 has been functionally ‘frozen.’ In terms of contents [it] continued to expand and brought a new wave of innovations.”
This includes improvements to mobile broadband, while at the same time bringing more “expansion and extension” to vertical use cases. Projects, he said, are now also being considered from an ‘end-to-end’ point of view, meaning not just the “UE [user experience] side, but also the network side.” That includes initiatives advancing uplink and downlink MIMO, as well as studies on new technologies.
Referring specifically to the mission critical piece meanwhile, he mentioned the importance of drone and satellite in both R17 and R18, as well as the expansion of Sidelink, as well as Multicast.
Moving onto Release 19, he said the expectation is that the “functional” side will be finalised by September of next year, with an additional three months to “finalise the code.” Elaborating, he continued: “We are continuing on what Release 18 is bringing in terms of realising the full potential of 5G. But as well, starting to create a bridge… to work on some early studies [for] 6G.”
Key areas mentioned in relation to R19 included the evolution of satellite work, as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning. The latter, he said, is a “major project” in relation to Release 19.
Another speaker representing ETSI was Brian Murgatroyd, who is the chair of its Technical Committee TETRA and Critical Communications Evolution. He spoke on the key topic of TETRA and critical broadband interworking, focussing in particular of the development of the interworking function standard.
This function, he said, was proving to be crucial in terms of the transition between narrowband and broadband. In his words, this could prove to be an “awful long period, with decades of interworking.”
Discussing the burgeoning standard itself, Murgatroyd said that it has been in development for seven and a half years and was just about to be published. He continued: “It’s now been recognised in the past few years that switching over to a broadband solution isn’t quite as straightforward as it might have appeared five or seven years ago. It now seems clear that major operators will want to ensure that everything is very safe to go onto these new systems.
“Can you do a switchover just like that? Possibly, but probably not. Because it’s not safe to do so.”
Going into the interworking standard in more detail - particularly in relation to the use cases - he continued: “There’s the obvious one - short term usage -, where the user community is transitioning from TETRA to use MCPTT. [The] part of MC data where you’ve got the requirement to be able to talk between the two systems.
“The other scenario is long-term, where it’s intended that TETRA and broadband live side by side for a lengthy period, or maybe always. There may be difference in the solutions for security between a short term and a long-term use of interworking.
“However, a user organisation may be willing to accept an increased level of risk in the shorter term. This specification describes security in an awful lot of detail.”
Murgatroyd then went on to list key facilities decided upon during the standardisation discussions. These include group attachment, with group calls controlled by either TETRA or MCPTT systems. There is also the need for private/individual calls to go across the two systems, and likewise emergency calls.
“And finally,” he said, “we want encrypted communications. So if you’ve got security at one end of your system, you want the same degree of security at the other.
“Both TETRA and broadband have their own methodology of providing more than adequate security. We’ve got to somehow make them meet in the middle.”
The ever-increasing importance the hybrid communications was also demonstrated across the exhibition floor, which we’ll look at more closely in a future article. This included offerings such as Airbus’ Tactilon Dabat, Sepura’s recently-launched SCL3, and Motorola’s MXP660 which was revealed on the first day of CCW 2024.
