Almost ready for prime time

Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Donny Jackson

Intelligent radios prepare to make the move from military operations to public safety

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In theory, technical policies could be included in cognitive software that would allow on-the-fly spectral changes by radios with no human intervention, something D'Itri said is particularly attractive for use in robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles. Frantz said the public-safety community likes the idea of being able to use over-the-air reprogramming to make changes in a system but does not want all alterations to be generated by computer software.

“[Public-safety officials] don't particularly like the idea of a cognitive network changing things all around without some human control,” Frantz said. “The model we seem to be gravitating toward is having a comm unit leader … controlling things. The cognitive capabilities allow those decisions to be made at a very high level and let them get implemented in a fairly optimal fashion.”

With software-defined radios expected to hit the market early next year and D'Itri's assessment that Shared Spectrum could provide those radios with cognitive capabilities six months later, it is technically possible that public safety could be using cognitive radios late next year. In all likelihood, however, the timeframe will be much longer than that.

One limiting factor is cost. Frantz said he believes cognitive and software-defined radios need to be priced at a level similar to high-end single-band radios for public-safety agencies to justify buying them. But the upfront cost should not be the only consideration. Entities should measure the value of systems based on the total cost of ownership, including the expenses association with ongoing maintenance, the useful life of a system and training costs, he said.

Indeed, some industry sources believe a well-designed cognitive system would be intuitive enough that user training would not cost as much as it does today and the ability of over-the-air reprogramming would minimize maintenance costs and extend the life of the system.

This vision certainly has appeal to public safety, but its widespread adoption will not be possible until significant testing and pilots have demonstrated the reliability of such next-gen systems, Powell said.

“When we talk bleeding edge in the state and local public-safety community, it usually involves real blood,” he said. “So we don't want to be on our bleeding edge. It's got to work.”

DYNAMIC PRIORITIZATION APPROACHES

Authorized by	Individual responder	Central authority	Network
Individual responder	Priority is controlled by individual responder.	Individual requests are granted manually by central authority, would not require cognitive capabilities.	Cognitive capability to respond to individual request.
Central authority	Priority changes are initiated by central authority and accepted by individual responder.	Central authority makes unilateral decisions regarding individual responder priorities.	Cognitive capabilities in the communications network evaluate requests initiated by central authority.
Network	Cognitive capabilities in network recommend priority change to individual responder who must accept the change.	Cognitive capabilities in network recommend priority changes to central authority who must accept the change.	Fully automated capability for priority management with no human in the decision loop.