Public Safety LTE

Airbus has launched a new handset, which combines TETRA radio for group voice communication and LTE for broadband data. The product is called Tactilon Dabat . Very little information is available yet. It has 4.7 inch touch screen. It has normal TETRA handset features including PTT button, loud audio and rugged hardware with IP65 & IP67 rating. Security of the smartphone is covered simply stating that all data within the device is encrypted. Nothing is said about the LTE features. Very likely the LTE band selection matches with common commercial LTE bands in TETRA markets. Because the announcement does not highlight LTE features it probably does not have any of the 3GPP mission critical features like release 12 QCIs. So the device has two radios, which can be used simultaneously. Therefore the current consumption could be an issue especially, if the applications use LTE radio frequently during missions. Battery capacity is not yet known except it is "long-lasting...

3GPP has started working on release 14 content. Public safety will again get enhancements especially on application layer. Mission critical push to talk (MCPTT) was specified in release 13 and next 3GPP introduces mission critical video and mission critical data service. Both include group communication capabilities i.e. group calls with video and group messaging. However the interesting thing is use cases considering various unmanned vehicles or even robots that require highly reliable, low latency and secure connection for remote control and live video streaming. Let's first check what kind of "things" 3GPP expects to be relevant for first responders. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) a.k.a. drones are nowadays common even as consumer toys. What is not common is the idea to control the drones and transmit live video over LTE. Remote flight control understandably requires low latency. Furthermore live video feed from the 360 camera of the drone needs to be real time espec...