Software Defined Radio in Public and Governmental Security Systems

Radio communication is crucial for Public and Governmental Security (P&GS) systems. No matter if a police officer waits for a radio message to get to his next scene or a firefighter needs to contact the operator, there will always be the need for a reliable, secure and fast radio communication structure. Besides the legacy requirements, however, there are also increasing demands for the radio devices: They shall be interoperable to other unit devices which perhaps support a completely different system, shall be connected to the World Wide Web and shall support new applications like video conferencing, file transfer, or access to email. The state of the art in Europe’s radio communication structure is about 60 years old and little has changed. In Germany for example there have been efforts to establish digital radio communications since the 1990s, employing the new standard Terrestrial Trunked RAdio (TETRA) but the police is still using analog devices. Now in 2010, the system shall be finally launched but the problem still remains. Development moves along and if one looks to the technical advances of the last decade, the new systems will be out of date in a few years. How can an established radio communications system for public and governmental security issues be changed seamlessly? One solution is Software Defined Radio (SDR). 2. Software Defined Radio