Cognitive-radio vendor Shared Spectrum this week announced that that it has been awarded funds from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to develop a multi-band cognitive radio system designed for public-safety use, reports MRT Magazine.
Traditional public safety radios operate only in a given frequency band that can get congested. Cognitive radios are designed to sense available spectrum in various spectrum bands and use those airwaves to deliver communications. Shared Spectrum radios operate from 30 MHz to 3 GHz. Their frequency-agile radios share the spectrum on a non-interference basis with existing users and feature policy-based network controls.
As part of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Next Generation Radio Program (XG), Shared Spectrum has demonstrated that its cognitive technology can sense and relocate radio communications.
“Basically, we’re going to be building off what we’re doing with the XG program, but we’ll be customizing the command-and-control aspects of that for public safety,” said Shared Spectrum Vice President Peter Tenhula during an interview with MRT.
Shared Spectrum hopes to demonstrate in a lab environment that its cognitive system will work to public-safety specifications during the first half of 2008. If enough additional funding can be secured, Shared Spectrum would like to conduct field tests of the technology by the end of 2008, said Tenhula.
Key public-safety communications experts assisting Shared Spectrum on the project include Nancy Jesuale of NetCity, Dale Hatfield, a former FCC official, and Thera Bradshaw, former chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles and past president of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO).
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