Realization of a Mobile Data Application in TETRA

At this moment, in many European countries the analogue PMR (Private Mobile Radio) communications structure is being replaced by a new digital system based on the TETRA (TErrestrial Trunked RAdio) standard. This new standard provides higher quality, more flexibility and improved security of communications. An interesting aspect of TETRA is that it provides data communications facilities. This makes it possible to do automatic tracking of the location of police cars, access medical information from an ambulance or do administrative work at the location of an incident, and many other things. The Dutch police has developed an application to access their central information systems called Mobipol. This application currently runs on GSM and RAM Mobitex (a commercial packet-switched network) wireless communications infrastructures. In the future, TETRA will be used instead. Mobipol uses the TCP/IP protocol to communicate. Unfortunately, TCP/IP functionality has been introduced in the TETRA standard only recently and is not supported in the TETRA Test Configuration. This paper describes a protocol design and implementation to support Mobipol and other applications using TCP/IP on TETRA. The system is intended for demonstration purposes and is specifically targeted at the TETRA Test Configuration of the Dutch police located in Driebergen. The development was performed in cooperation with ITO, the IT organization of the Dutch police. Keywords— TETRA, Mobipol, TCP/IP