One of the biggest challenges for the FirstNet board as they plan a framework for a nationwide public safety network is how to ensure interoperability between local, state and federal agencies while maintaining the security of each entity’s information.
LGS Innovations thinks it has the answer to that problem: a multi-core network architecture. And it has already tried out the technology in a Band 14 pilot test in Hawaii.
LGS Innovations is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alcatel-Lucent, with about 700 employees and several labs around the United States. One of its primary functions has been to provide wireless communications to the military for tactical environments. The company was also tapped to support a trial of a Band 14 network in Hawaii during 2011-2012, CEO Kevin Kelly said, using USB dongles and some devices in the city of Hilo, Hawaii.
According to documentation of the project for last year’s National Association of State CIO recognition awards, the pilot involved Band 14 frequencies 758-768 MHz and 788-798 MHz, and leveraged existing county of Hawaii towers and network infrastructure. The network was small, consisting of two ENodeBs and six LTE sites, and is no longer operational. Backhaul to the EPC rode the county’s IP/MPLS gigabit fiber network. Alcatel-Lucent loaned out the nodes, EPC and some LTE modems as trial equipment, and two more modems were provided by Cassidian Communications. LGS Innovations provided the turnkey pilot program that relied on Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE equipment.
The pilot involved demonstrations of multiple technology uses, including mobile-to-mobile video; mobile video collaboration with an emergency operations center; inter-agency collaboration; video conferencing; live high-definition video; and the integration of LTE clients with records management; among others.
The Federal Communications Commission granted use of the spectrum for the pilot, but it wasn’t performed under the auspices of NTIA, which has been the source of grants for other first responder early adopter networks and network plans that are receiving guidance from FirstNet. The USDA’s CIO office was the federal agency that funded and participated in the project, along with the state of Hawaii and county of Hawaii.
Kelly says that the success of the Hawaii pilot offers proof-of-concept that a multi-core network can provide multiple agencies with wireless access and interoperability, while maintaining some level of separation for agencies that are likely to have different desired levels of security for their information that cannot be reconciled, which could range from health information of a patient in an ambulance to top-secret Homeland Security or FBI operations.
“I don’t see the city of Los Angeles agreeing with the city of Denver, agreeing with the Fort Carson military post … on what the security standards need to be,” Kelly said.
He also pointed out that the network cores used by telecom providers are designed to provide for a commercial subscriber base of many millions – but FirstNet, he estimated, might have a total of about 2 million users if all of the first responders and federal employees in the country make use of it.
“The cores that we have for LTE … are way overbuilt for that capacity,” he said. One of LGS Innovations’ focus has been on developing smaller, portable cores that can be installed on moving equipment such as military vehicles – or fire trucks. Distributed cores mean that an outage from a disaster is unlikely to take down the entire system, he explained.
A common radio access network serves as the wire connecting different agencies, Kelly said. Policy within a multi-core network architecture can determine that users can be connected, while not having complete access to the information within each others’ networks, he continued.
“I think what FirstNet needs to do is figure out who’s going to run it, where do we establish oversight and guidance for all the agreements that we need,” Kelly said – perhaps by sponsoring a collaborative environment where vendors can reveal some information to each other to design solutions that work well together, without compromising their intellectual property.
“There’s no way Verizon is going to rule the day here and take over all the FirstNet users, or AT&T, or Sprint, or any of the carriers. It’s unrealistic to think that Alcatel-Lucent will be the only vendor for ENodeBs or backhaul solutions,” Kelly said.
He said that in his opinion, the network that FirstNet wants can be built with far less than has been committed to the project – $7 billion.
“We have multiple copies of this existing worldwide, the only difference here is it’s Band 14,” Kelly said. “Everything else will work relatively the same. We can take what’s viewed to be sufficient from the wireless community and service providers – Verizon, Sprint, AT&T – and marry them. There isn’t that much that needs to change to successfully build a wireless infrastructure for your first responders.” But, he added, “we need to build the network.”
