CCE Review
At the moment, the UK
army is actually using
commercial satellites carrying
military trafc because they
know they can secure it
end to end
requirements” then it will be possible
to realise greater economies of scale, for
example by having a common chipset
for their devices.
Scrase concluded by discussing 5G
satellite standardisation. He explained
that 5G will be the rst generation to
have an integrated cellular component.
is will allow 5G base stations and
user devices to operate hundreds of
metres in the air and in low Earth
orbit. “e important thing is that
it’s the same radio so you’re looking at
seamless handover between terrestrial
and non-terrestrial networks, which
for certain things like asset tracking
it really starts to get very interesting
in a commercial sense. In the public
safety sense, you can see a lot of reasons
why this will be a sensible thing, maybe
you have a disaster somewhere where
you need a lot of radio coverage at
short notice, you can stick a radio base
station on a drone and you’ve got an
instantaneousnetwork.”
He added that while this “sounds
great” there is the need to consider the
potential eects of this approach in
terms of radio planning and what it
will do to your terrestrial network. To
this end, exhaustive studies are being
undertaken. “Once we understand the
complexity, we will then in Release 17
move to standardising that, so by the
time we get to Release 17, you will see
the normative standards which dene
how you can have 5G non-terrestrial
radio seamlessly attached to your
terrestrial radio.”
During a 5G panel discussion
moderated by Hermitage Comms
founder, partner and managing
consultant Iain Ivory, Peter Curnow-
Ford, managing partner at Viatec
Associates, highlighted the way the
700MHz band is a prime candidate.
is is because 5G splits the control
plane from the user plane, which
creates the desire to have access to as
low a frequency band as possible so
that the coverage is there for it to be
easily controlled; and the fact that
5G allows a device to talk to multiple
cell towers simultaneously means
a device can access other reachable,
higher frequency bands, eg, 1800MHz,
2.6GHz, 3.5GHz, forbandwidth.
In the same session, Martin
Whitcroft, business development
manager for private broadband
solutions at Motorola Solutions, drew
attention to 5G’s wider implications,
bearing in mind V2X (vehicle to
everything) communications – which
will be enabled in Release 16 – with
vehicles that will be collecting data
around their speed and separation
distances. “Who owns that data? If
there’s an accident, can the police take
that data from thevehicle?”
Curnow-Ford drew attention to
the scale of the potential 5G public
safety market, saying it is one of only
eight distinct 5G use-cases “that make
sense and can be translated into hard
numbers”, and that it “represents 19
per cent of the commercial opportunity
of a $1.3trn global business in 2026”.
He also highlighted the way 5G
enables a radio-agnostic approach,
in which a 5G core and network
slicing can be used to run a network
composed of multiple radio access
technologies, including IoT and Wi-Fi,
“so there is the ability for public safety
to not be strapped into or locked into
one specic piece of technology”.
He also drew parallels between the
fact that public safety operators are
starting to work with commercial
operators and the way in which
military forces are changing their
approach to telecoms procurement,
given how “costs have been
astronomical and they continue to
rise”. He went on to say the defence
sector has come to the realisation that
it can’t use dedicated networks all the
time. “At the moment, the UK army
is actually using commercial satellites
carrying military trac because they
know they can secure it end to end.”
Spectrum sharing
During a session on spectrum, I
asked whether MulteFire, an LTEbased
technology that can operate in
licence-exempt or shared spectrum,
could be leveraged by public safety
organisations, possibly for highbandwidth
applications such as video
streaming. Noel Kirkaldy, head of
technology, Middle East and Africa
at Nokia Solutions and Networks,
responded, noting the recent launch of
a MulteFire service in Japan in 1.9GHz
(Band 39), which is similar to the
DECT band.
Although MulteFire is aimed at
business-critical applications, he said
“I’ve never met a MHz I didn’t like”
and “it’s another string to our bow”.
He explained that the next phase for
MulteFire is its introduction in the
900MHz band in Region 2 (Americas)
and the 800MHz short range device/
ISM band in the EMEA region.
Kirkaldy also told the audience to
look out for 5G New Radio (NR)
unlicensed, “and that’s something we’re
just starting in Release 16”.
David Chater-Lea, fellow of the
A panel session
moderated
by Hermitage
Comms’ Iain
Ivory looked at
5G’s implications
for critical
communications
users
10 www.criticalcomms.com April Supplement 2019
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