The Critical Communications Association (TCCA) has announced the return of Critical Communications World (CCW), the global conference and exhibition for the critical communication sector. The event is scheduled to take place from 14-16 May at the Dubai World Trade Centre, UAE. CCW has been serving the sector for over two decades, consistently bringing together mission-critical and business-critical end-users with manufacturers and suppliers. CCW also provides a global network hub, offering attendees opportunities to gain inspiration, expand their knowledge, and forge connections. Tero Pesonen, Chair of TCCA’s Critical Communications Broadband Group, shares more details about the critical communications industry and the significance of the event with edge/.
What are some of the most significant technological developments in critical communications that you’ve observed recently?
The evolution of voice-centric field operations to information-centric operations is taking significant steps. Whereas in the past, field operations were limited by technology, with the digitisation of narrowband services such as TETRA, and with the advent of critical broadband over 4G/5G, technology is no longer a barrier – the limitations are now based on culture and with that our ability to imagine the possibilities.
As 4G/5G provides bandwidth for dynamic data, the combination of advanced sensors, information fusion and analytics gives us unforeseen possibilities for situation awareness. The challenge is in rapidly translating the data into valuable and useful information that can inform critical users in near real-time in the format that best suits receivers’ situations and senses. However, irrespective of how innovative the data applications are, for the immediacy of communications in a critical situation the preferred medium will undoubtedly always be voice.
With the evolution of 5G and other broadband technologies, how do you see these impacting critical communications networks?
The key requirements of critical communications networks are coverage, capacity, availability and fit for purpose. TETRA – the worldwide adopted critical communications narrowband standard – has been designed to fit the purpose of mission-critical voice and short messaging communication. The need for coverage is addressed by deployments in rather low frequencies, and capacity demand is overcome by very capacity-efficient semi-duplex group-oriented functionalities. For availability, TETRA has multiple layers of redundancy starting with typically overlapping cell coverage, base station autonomous operation i.e. base station fallback and ultimately direct device-to-device communication i.e. Direct Mode Operation (DMO).
Until recent developments in 4G/5G, there was no matching alternative. However, now – in particular with 5G – additional parallel access methods complementing the terrestrial cellular networks are being standardised. Non-Terrestrial-Networks (NTN) and Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations provide complementary connection and backup when the sky is visible. In turn, Device-to-Device (D2D) over Sidelink promises to bring coverage to underground areas with a gateway to the network.
3GPP standards-based broadband networks are built to operate on multiple frequency bands providing a combination of coverage and capacity. Mission Critical Services (MCX) – Mission Critical Push-to-Talk, Video and Data – boosted with Quality of Service, Priority and Pre-emption (QPP) capabilities enable new deployment alternatives. Whereas in the narrowband era, in praxis critical communications networks had to be dedicated, now it is fully feasible to share the network and the related cost with consumer users either partially or fully.
Could you provide insights into how critical communications are adapting to the challenges posed by cybersecurity threats?
With all services moving to be data-based including voice, ensuring the security of information is far more challenging for critical broadband. TETRA has been designed from the start to provide the highest possible level of security. TETRA networks are protected from any attempts of malicious access through cloned user identity thanks to very effective user authentication mechanisms, which can also be made mutual to protect user identities and related authentication keys from any device pretending to operate as a TETRA base station.
However, the value chain for critical broadband is much wider and more complex, in some cases involving networks also used by consumers, with myriad applications and potential points of weakness. With 4G and 5G networks having more interfaces, more related parties and more traffic, the need for security is also much higher. Unlike a TETRA network, apart from a few cases the critical network operator can’t own all parts of the value chain that forms the end-to-end service and thus has full control over the security protocols.
Ensuring security across critical broadband networks and services needs to be an integral part of their generic development, and it must be recognised that there is a constant need to improve security – it is never a completed process. The approach will be to develop an organisational understanding to manage cybersecurity risk to systems, people, assets, data, and capabilities, to have the capability to implement appropriate activities to identify the occurrence of a cybersecurity event and to respond immediately – and to have in place appropriate plans for resilience and restoration of services. Within TCCA’s Critical Communications Broadband Group we have a dedicated task force focused on developing best practice advice for security procedures.
What role do you see emerging technologies like AI and IoT playing in enhancing the capabilities of critical communications systems?
Telemetry and sensoring have been around for a relatively long time, but with broadband services, the potential for IoT is exponentially growing. With the notion of having everything connected and measured, the door to predictive analysis and accurate response is open. This is what AI is needed for. As the amount of data continues to proliferate, AI-based methodologies are required to handle the data overflow and turn it into useful information that matches each receiver’s current situation and need, whether this is interpreting a voice command of a leader to a haptic response of a firefighter’s jacket or automatic service recovery of the Radio Access Network (RAN) if the transmission link gets broken.
AI needs to be trained, secured and sandboxed to ensure that it arrives at the outcomes we require. Here, the challenge is in having the amount and quality of training data also for the exceptionally rare circumstances for which critical communications operatives need to be prepared.
What are some of the key trends and advancements attendees can expect at CCW 2024?
Critical Communications World sets the agenda for the future of critical communications – the innovations across products and services, the thought leadership, the debates, the knowledge exchange, and the gathering of government authorities from around the world in the Global Village – CCW is an unrivalled meeting place for those who drive the sector forward.
Connectivity, security, deployment and financing models, regulatory challenges, information-centric operations – all these and more will be discussed and attendees will leave the event with a far deeper understanding of what is happening now, and what will happen in the future.
