Title: Satellite system for Public SafEty & sEcurity Domains
Grant agreement no: European Space Agency (ESA) ARTES
Completed: 22 December 2011
Links: Website
Research area:
Communication is essential in Public Safety and Security operations. Fast and reliable communications enable the acceleration of the mission. The smart sharing of information provides a coherent situation awareness to everyone, improving efficiency with a shared comprehension of the operational facts. In this perspective, SPEED focused on end-users mobile communications needs. Complementarities of satellite and wireless systems seem to be of high interest.
The objectives were to propose a preliminary design of an integrated system, to ensure the technological feasibility of the solution and to provide R&D and roadmap recommendations. Organisational, political and business perspectives have been analysed in a second step.
The study objectives focused on the feasibility, the definition and size of an integrated mobile system dedicated to European Public Safety and Security operations. A hybrid system, composed of satellite, CGC and PMR segments is envisaged to meet the end-users’ requirements.
Four major activities have been realised:
- The first activity was to assess the users requirements, based on an initial state of the art existing communication capabilities, on lessons learned, analysis of recent operational scenarios and end-users assessment (through a questionnaire campaign and interviews),
- The second activity was to define and size the adequate solutions, based on a hybrid satellite / terrestrial architecture. Two approaches have been followed: the terrestrial segment has been considered as an evolution (or a future evolution) of the existing dedicated PMR networks whereas the satellite segment has been defined as a new component, dedicated to Public Safety operations,
- The third activity was to identify the critical technological required to ensure the feasibility of the proposed solution, the regulatory or organisational risks which have to be addressed in order to be able to develop the final system and finally to identify. R&T critical issues and propose roadmap and recommendations to ESA,
- A complementary activity has been included thanks to a Change Notice to the Contract. It focused on the analysis of the political and organisational issues to set up an ambitious European telecommunication programme and on the possible economical models, involving both commercial operators and institutional bodies at European level.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s European Space Agency (ESA) ARTES Programme
