Emergency Mobile Radio Network based on Software-Defined Radio (社会の安全・安心を支えるパブリックソリューション特集) -- (安全・安心な暮らし)

With increasing risks of natural disasters, terrorism, border incidents, and other emergency situations, the importance of information sharing among organizations is growing. However, one conventional hardware-based wireless system is basically limited to support one network. The organizations have their own networks, on which different frequency bands, waveforms and protocols are utilized. Therefore, it’s hard to share information among organizations. NEC is meeting the challenges of these technical difficulties with Software-Defined Radio (SDR), which is a radio communication technology. SDR, generally explained as a radio signal received and transmitted through an antenna, is processed into and from voices and data by loadable software. The standards for SDR include a Software Communication Architecture (SCA) published by Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), which enables equipment compatibility. NEC released an SCA-based radio for the first time in the world. NEC is currently providing several SDR-based products and solutions. This paper introduces some of the SDR-based products including Emergency Mobile Radio that is a major example of NEC’s SDR-based terminals.