Popular P25 Public Safety Waveform Ported to Spectrum's Software Reconfigurable Radio
27 May 2009
Spectrum Signal Processing by Vecima (Spectrum), an advanced communications equipment supplier, announced today a partnership with Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) to port the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Project 25 (P25) public safety waveform to Spectrum's flexComm™ SDR-4000 software reconfigurable radio.
P25 is the latest addition to Spectrum's expanding waveform portfolio. This waveform is the most popular and widely used public safety waveform in North America. Supporting this waveform on a software reconfigurable radio allows military and other users to more easily communicate with public safety personnel to better co-ordinate joint emergency efforts. A demonstration of this implementation is provided at CANSEC 2009, in Ottawa, and features an industry standard P25 radio talking over-the-air to an SDR-4000.
"Spectrum continues to expand its waveform portfolio, offering customers more options and applications available with its software reconfigurable technologies," said Mark Briggs, VP marketing at Spectrum. "We are pleased to continue working closely with CRC to provide our markets with software defined implementations of waveforms critical to both military and civil user communities."
"CRC selected the SDR-4000 because it provided the comprehensive hardware, software, and environment required for the P25 port," said Claude Belisle, VP of the satellite communications and radio propagation branch of CRC. "The SDR-4000 also supported the entire software communications architecture (SCA) software operating stack that was critical in making this project successful."
The SDR-4000 has been proven to support implementations of military waveforms, such as the joint tactical radio system (JTRS), wideband networking waveform orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (WNW OFDM), soldier radio waveform electronic warfare (SRW EW) and single channel ground and airborne radio system (SINCGARS). Adding a public safety waveform such as P25 lays the foundation for interoperability between military and civil agencies.
About the SDR-4000
The SDR-4000 is a multi-purpose software reconfigurable transceiver that combines heterogeneous processing including digital signal processors (DSP), general purpose processors (GPP) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGA).
The SDR-4000 is packaged in a small 3U CompactPCI® form-factor and is available in air-cooled for benign environments or conduction-cooled packages for deployments in harsh environments. The SDR-4000 is available with a real-time operating system, hardware abstraction layer and CRC's SCARI Software Suite, a complete development environment for the SCA. For more information on the SDR-4000, please visit www.spectrumsignal.com/products/3u.
About the P25 implementation
P25 is a suite of system standards that define digital radio communications system architectures addressing the needs of public safety and government organisations. P25 involves digital land mobile radio services for local, state/provincial and national public safety organisations and agencies.
The implementation includes the phase I common air interface (CAI) in conventional mode at 9.6kbps. This air interface works with 12.5kHz channels, allowing the transmission of data or coded voice with the continuous four level FM (C4FM) modulation format. The MAC sublayer performs encapsulation and imbeds frame synchronisation information, according to the CAI specification.
The logical link control (LLC) sublayer includes both voice and data packets processing, along with their respective interleaving and error correction schemes as specified in the CAI. The implementation is fully compatible with, and has been fully tested under, the SCA framework.
Spectrum and CRC demonstrated P25 running on the SDR-4000 during the CANSEC tradeshow, which took place from May 27 to May 28 in Ottawa, ON.
