Mutualink, Intel team to provide wearable public-safety gateway with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth connectivity

Making all of this possible is Intel’s Edison chip, which has a dual-core CPU and single-core microcontroller, as well as integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support in a small, low-power package. With 1 GB DDR and 4 GB FLASH memory, the Edison chip can enable applications that require processing capability.

Patrick Flynn, Intel Security’s director of homeland and national-security programs, said the Mutualink wearable-gateway solution is a logical extension of Intel’s IoT approach and overall product-development strategy.

“It was an opportunity to enable Mutualink to leverage our $10 billion per year in R&D funding to be able make it real,” Flynn said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “One thing that Intel prides itself it on is being able to drive the market. We will take the risk, and we will push these things ahead, because it enables the greater good.

“One of the things that Intel adheres to when we look at something like this on the R&D front is that we ask ourselves the question, ‘Will it change the world?’ This does that. It’s one of things that potentially changes the way that law enforcement communicates, and obviously it segways into our Band 14 mobile chip development. Also, we overlay the security—we have to ensure that it all speaks to each other efficiently, effectively, cheaply but securely.

“In the end, Mutualink had a very sound approach and some serious public-safety buy in on the user. It really spoke to us from a public-safety standpoint, so it was an easy decision to be able to fund this.”

Wengrovitz said that the Edison chip also can be integrated at fixed locations—for example, in lightbulbs, exit signs and fire pull boxes—to provide additional connectivity and location-based services as part of the “Internet of Public-Safety Things” that could be leveraged by first responders.

“It not only can connect securely back over encrypted tunnels to the cloud and the command, but those Internet of Public-Safety Things appliances provide services to first responders—and potentially the general public—that are within range of these,” Wengrovitz said.

“You could use an emergency-exit sign to turn on a special Wi-Fi network that would then telemeter back through Band 14. So, if you had Wi-Fi phones and Band 14 and this Internet of Public-Safety Things device in a school, shopping mall or a building, when first responders enter the building, they get good connectivity by linking back through this Wi-Fi and then out on the side through Band 14 or whatever wired network that is available.”