Head’s up, FirstNet–Here comes wearable technology

But there is more to these technologies than just what can be achieved when first responders are seamless and passively reporting environmental conditions and location. There are underlying technical features of wearable tech that—if architected correctly—greatly enhance their functionality over traditional communications systems.

A key feature of a well-designed, wearable sensor and/or device is that it can be operated utilizing discrete, robust, context-specific signaling using very little bandwidth, which is common for biometric and environmental sensors. This is important, because bandwidth-intensive, time-sensitive, continuous-connection services like video are not very robust, in that the complete messaging is more likely to be interrupted .

In fact, many things can go wrong with video: it needs lots of bandwidth, the signals essentially have to arrive in order, and it can only tolerate a certain amount of delay. If anything goes wrong, the frame freezes, the picture becomes frazzled, or just goes blank.

In contrast, a wearable communications sensor could transmit hundreds of copies of the same signal/message, and only one of them has to be received for communications to be successful. In a network designed for the purpose, these type of messages can get through under very extreme conditions.

What might a signal/message be? Detection of a gunshot or a significant change in surrounding temperature, pressure, heart rate, location, etc. The implications of such information may prove to be fundamentally important to the future of public-safety communications on a shared-bandwidth service like FirstNet. An oft-cited example of this type of signaling is the robust communications once supported in the Nextel push-to-talk feature. The small size of these discrete packets of voice data made it one of the more reliable voice networks in New York during the response to the 9/11 attacks. 

Because of their small size, signals from wearable technology can be transmitted via a number of different mediums and channels, including the control, bearer, and broadcast channels. Another unique characteristic of short, discrete signaling is the ability for them to penetrate much further into structures—or transmit further outside a structure, if the signal is initiated from inside a building—because of its short, robust nature.