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The mobile desktop
It is fair to say that mobile data has been available for some considerable time, however, adoption of the technology across the public safety sector is governed by the ability to enhance operational effectiveness. In the first part of a series of articles looking at mobile data, we explore just how efficient the applications are...
The key consideration for mobile data deployment, and onward application development within the public safety sector is the benefits it can provide. Without doubt, the speed of adoption of mobile data will be governed by the ability to enhance operational effectiveness and user safety to maintain performance in varied operational use.
However, some trails of mobile data solutions have failed through poor user interfaces, slow responsiveness and poor performance during peak use. As pointed out by Iain Ivory, TETRA market development manager, Motorola, “Efficient use of data bearers is an area that is certainly evolving. As more responders adopt data there is an increased load on the data bearer. Whether this is a dedicated, secure bearer such as Airwave or a shared public bearer such as GPRS. It is most likely that multiple bearers will be used, with some services such as Airwave providing core services that require secure, resilient and reliable access in all situations. In addition, more emphasis will be placed on data compression to improve throughput, irrespective of the bearer. The use of multiple bearers will also drive demand for multi-bearer devices to ensure responders do not become overburdened with equipment.”
This can already be seen in the case of Lancashire Constabulary (published January 2007 - The BAPCO Journal), where it became the first UK police force to deploy a multi-bearer mobile data solution. At the heart of this solution is the Mobile Applications Gateway (MAG) which has been developed specifically with the needs of public safety users in mind. Hosted inside the Airwave secure environment, the MAG service connects to a variety of wireless networks and devices. And being ‘future proofed’ it is able to connect with other multi bearer network services such as 3G and Wi-fi.
Compression aids speed
Nick Chorley, Intergraph consultant suggests that data compression technologies will enable more devices to make better use of Airwave’s meagre bandwidth and there will be a push from government to get the Police to utilise Airwave for data. This will be particularly attractive to rural forces who have limited GPRS coverage.
It is important to point out however, that we are already seeing a greater speed of data transmission being achieved over TETRA networks (and in the UK over Airwave) through products such as i-SqZ from Infomatrix. Launched some twelve months ago, this particular product improves the performance of information based solutions over TETRA data links by up to 20 times, dependent upon the application and the content. The solution has been implemented in the Airwave network thus enabling faster information service interaction to reduce data channel loading on the network, and to enable a range of new applications, bringing together the potential for location, images and messaging. Commenting, John Rogers, head of mobile data, O2 Airwave said, “This technology from Informatrix greatly enhances the speed with which public safety personnel can retrieve vital information over the Airwave network.”
In fact, as pointed out by Peter Hudson, senior product manager, Sepura, many forces are actually quite nervous about using data over TETRA, therefore the company is currently demonstrating how data compression techniques provide improved broadband usage and Sepura is facilitating a use of applications that show what can be achieved.
Improving the user experience
“The user experience will also be improved through future devices being able to deliver more user friendly data input methods and increased display size, which in turn will make more complex applications available and in turn drive the adoption of mobile data. This is already being seen with the introduction of the Motorola TETRA PDA,” says Ivory.
Chorley adds, “We see that mobile data, specifically in the police force, is moving away from being lead by application specific installations to a more generic, mobile desktop that can run a variety of applications, typically office functions from the mainstream IT world.”
Concluding, Mark Dale-Lace, CMC Mobile Computing suggests that with the increasing versatility and embedded functionality of the mobile PC will become the dominant platform for the mobile worker. Product that offers industry standard operating systems (Windows XP) that allow the use of applications already used on the desktop and laptop, enable a very rapid implementation, minimal training and no additional systems support requirements, because they are just additional PCs on the network. “Hardware is also offering increasing levels of embedded functionality with embedded wireless (Bluetooth, WLAN and WWAN) becoming standard features, and more recently GPS.”
Next month we take a closer look at the impact, if any, mobile data is having on the control room environment.
