PMRExpo
The full spectrum of
solutions
The two-way radio industry came together at last year’s PMRExpo to guide
mission-critical users through the impending transition to mobile broadband.
Critical Communications Today reports
Last year’s PMRExpo was busier than ever, with
230 exhibitors from 22 countries, and almost
4,600 visitors gathering in Cologne to discuss the
evolution of mission-critical communications.
Herbert Reul, minister of the interior of the
German State of North Rhine-Westphalia, kicked off the
conference in earnest by discussing his state’s work in the area
of public safety communications, highlighting the roll-out
of 20,000 smartphones for its police officers. He also gave
a status update on the VIDaL project, which seeks to link
the state’s control rooms to allow the automated exchange of
information. The project is being conducted by the Ministry
of Interior and PMeV.
Reul hailed the “remarkable” progress that has been made
since VIDaL was announced at PMRExpo back in 2017.
The content that will be transmitted over the system has
been defined, with the transmission protocols to follow
shortly. The media requirements and transmission lines are
still a work in progress. The states of Lower Saxony and
Hesse have become involved and a tender for a pilot project
will soon be issued.
Dr. Dietmar Gollnick, managing director at e*Message
Wireless Information Services Deutschland GmbH,
highlighted the difficulty in explaining mathematical
concepts around availability. He posed the question as to
how many managers who make decisions on resiliency have
poor maths skills and lack knowledge of related concepts,
and how we as an industry can change that state of affairs,
arguing that “if we had three per cent more knowledge, we’d
get 20 per cent more revenue”.
Andreas Gegenfurtner, president of BDBOS, the operator
of Germany’s public safety TETRA network, was asked by
a representative of the German energy sector why BDBOS
is seeking to use spectrum in the 450MHz band and not
700MHz. Gegenfurtner said that if BDBOS were to use
700MHz, double the number of base stations and billions
more euros in additional funding would be required, and
that the in-building penetration would be worse.
Using power responsibly
Mahesh Saptharishi, CTO at Motorola Solutions, set out his
company’s approach to AI and machine learning for public
safety. He explained that Motorola is focusing on narrow
applications of AI that keep the human in the loop, aid
decision-making but don’t take them on their own, and can
“accelerate workflows”, as this reduces the amount of data
required and means that the algorithms are more likely to
be fair. He added that if the dataset is not representative of
all the scenarios in which the algorithm will operate, the less
fair it will be. Saptharishi listed three user-experience design
principles for workflow AI:
• Context awareness – This helps present information
appropriately (to reduce overload, particularly during
stressful situations) and helps enforce privacy policies
PMRExpo 2019
took place at
Koelnmesse in
Cologne
20 www.criticalcomms.com January 2020
/www.criticalcomms.com