Vendor team outlines features of all-deployable public-safety LTE network for state of New Jersey
One scenario that is expected to be explored is how a deployable solution that moves into an area—for instance, to provide additional capacity to users that are low on bandwidth during a particular response—that already has fixed coverage interacts with the existing system, Patterson said.
“There are many self-organizing features that help with that, and we have a number of tools on board that can allow you to understand what coverage you’re providing,” he said. “That actually is one of the lessons they would like to learn out of this network—if you have a some of these in close proximity to each other, how will they behave?
“We expect them to fully exercise all of the capabilities and really determine where the knees in the curve are [in terms of performance] and those kinds of things, so they can learn how to best leverage this kind of technology in a semi-fixed, fixed or deployable configuration.”
Casciano said the biggest challenge faced by the vendors to date is meeting the “tight” timelines associated with the JerseyNet project, but site installations should begin in the next month or two.
“We ramped up quickly, the team jelled quickly,” Casciano said. “It’s a lot of pieces to put together in a short amount of time, but so far things are going extremely well.”
Patterson echoed this sentiment.
“It’s a really exciting project,” he said. “It’s challenging in the sense that it’s a really aggressive timeline, and it’s the first project of its kind that’s made of all deployable nodes. We’re really excited with our partnership with the state, and we can’t wait until it’s up and running, so we can see how it will be exercised in the field.”