Jim Jamieson
Province
Fred Frantz, law-enforcement head for L3 Communications, says future systems will increase safety. Photograph by : Jason Payne, The Province
In the near future, your mobile phone or wireless-capable laptop will be able to signal hop with such ease that you’ll never be without a connection or the speed to make it work.
Such a statement will surely be met with skepticism by the heavy users out there who are well familiar with dead spots. But a developing technology called software-defined radio — SDR — is poised to make it all happen.
The goal is to enable a single device to be a cordless phone, cellular phone, Blackberry, wireless laptop or even a GPS unit. Such a device — and one’s not yet invented — would be able to jump between radio frequencies and standards that are now incompatible.
“It’s called ubiquitous communications,” said David Murotake, president of Nashua, N.H.-based SCA Technica, one of several international firms in Vancouver this week to attend the SDR Forum to discuss industry issues.
“We’ve got a ways to go yet, but the idea is that you’ll be able to go anywhere and communicate with anyone you need to communicate with, whenever, and with the quality you need.
“It means being able to communicate with a wi-fi network or a cellular network or through a satellite if you need to. As a consumer, you don’t know anything about it — it just works.”
The technology is already being used by the U.S. military and is within two years of deployment in the emergency response industry — where a loss in communications can cost lives.
“If you look at [disasters] such as Hurricane Katrina, one of the challenges is a number of different responders are on different radio systems,” said Fred Frantz of Rome, N.Y.’s L3 Communications. “We are looking at multi-band radios as a first step.”
Kevin McGinnis of the U.S. National Association of State EMS Officials said communications technologies used by paramedics have improved over the years, but always suffered from dead spots.
“If somebody has a cardiac arrest, the last thing I want to do is have to pick from numerous devices to talk to the doctor at the hospital,” he said.
“All I want is one device that has a button that says Doctor X or Hospital Y and it’s programmed to check the available signals and pick the appropriate one.”
Consumers can expect to see the technology fully implemented in the next five to 10 years after issues such as software and hardware design, security and billing protocols have been solved.
© The Vancouver Province 2006