In a world that is moving incredibly fast and becoming increasingly unpredictable, seamless and continuous communication is a critical ability for effective response. The role of mission-critical communication systems ensures that information is put in the right hands at the right time and place.
Mission-critical communication systems deliver reliability, availability, resilience, and security to government and public safety agencies such as first responders. These systems are also crucial for industries such as railways, utility, and power grids to promote seamless communication and increase operational efficiencies while ensuring a solid security posture.
More so, mission-critical systems connect teams across sites and geographies for efficient working. These systems need:
As such, Radio over IP or RoIP and TETRA are enablers of the mission-critical communication systems landscape. These technologies are helping industries, government bodies, and first responders communicate effectively and securely when coordinating operations and tasks.
Radio Over Internet Protocol or RoIP is a next-generation network for mission-critical communication. It transmits radio communication signals employing the Internet Protocol (IP) standard.
RoIP facilitates connection and communication between two or more analogue radio devices or radio networks using digital-to-analogue converting receivers. These receivers are directly connected to an internet backbone and transmit and receive audio communications over the Internet Protocol (IP).
RoIP provides a command layer to control radio functions that include Push-to-talk (PTT). It offers a cost-effective way to interconnect radio systems and operators and delivers greater reliability than existing radio communications networks.
RoIP easily integrates with the existing IP infrastructure, be it LAN, WAN, or VPN, and removes any need for additional installation or maintenance of the network architecture. Moreover, it allows radio audio to be routed to virtually any type of radio system. Since RoIP utilizes an IP network's resilient infrastructure, it increases mission-critical systems' reliability.
Centralized command and control, local incident response, and the flexibility to connect multiple sites across wide geographical areas are some of the other benefits of RoIP.
TETRA, or Terrestrial Trunked Radio systems, are employed in the public safety and commercial sectors for organizations that need reliable and secure communication.
It's a widely-used open standard that helps organizations employ data and voice to power their communication systems. Most suited for critical data applications needing ultimate reliability, TETRA enables organizations across industries to have safe and reliable communications.
TETRA networks are specialist networks designed to deliver a high level of resilience and redundancy in their architectures. These networks provide a specific grade of service that ensures that calls get queued and not dropped when a service reaches the peak load of the user groups.
TETRA supports high-end encryption (E2EE and AIE) and mutual authentication and delivers system reliability owing to its robust design coupled with intelligent network resilience.
These systems are designed to address peak usage and can be configured to meet specific requirements such as regional or national networks or single or multi-site operations. Hence, they offer a high degree of control over the design, features, system requirements, operations, etc.
TETRA allows secure communications with core safety and reliability features used by Emergency Medical and Fire and Rescue Services and the Police. It is also used by utility companies, rail and metro lines, public safety, and public transportation, including seaports, airports, buses and metros, power stations, oil refineries, and chemical plants.
TETRA standards are evolving now to provide enhancements driven by technology innovations, user needs, and parallel standard developments.
While TETRA and RoIP are robust technologies, RoIP is often a more favourable choice.
| RoIP | TETRA |
|---|---|
| RoIP can operate on the open band, Wi-Fi/ Commercial Cellular/ Commercial Captive Cellular- APN, QoS, Prioritization /Hybrid/Captive LTE. Further, it does not need a Spectrum License from TRAI/WPC/DoT. | TETRA requires Mandatory Frequency Allocation and comes with a high spectrum cost. |
| RoIP does not need User Terminal device certification from Wireless Planning Commission. It only needs IMEI/GSDMA certifications. | TETRA needs Type Approval and Part of Dealer Possession and license list with frequency approval |
| RoIPcan be deployed across Wi-Fi, CDMA, GSM, UMTS, and LTE and is interoperable with Open Protocols. | TETRA stands are evolving; they use legacy, licensed spectrums with high OPEX. |
| RoIP can easily and flexibly scale users. It allows organizations to add and delete users easily and instantaneously. | TETRA onboarding requires RF spectrum re-planning and can be cumbersome and effort-intensive. Plus, it needs specialized legacy software and coding skills. |
| RoIP allows push to multimedia, including audio, video, text, and graphics. This becomes an important consideration point for mission-critical systems. | TETRA is limited to text alone. |
| RoIP increases coverage footprint and offers complete lone worker protection. | TETRA offers partial lone worker protection with coverage limited only to the site range |
| RoIP offers operating system openness and can be 100% interoperable. | TETRA is proprietary and legacy-based and, while being customizable, does not support complete interoperability. |
| RoIP is more cost-effective than TETRA since the device cost is medium to low. The RoIP per site core equipment cost for channels is approximately <150lacs. RoIP terminal and spectrum costs are also lower than TETRA, making it a more cost-effective solution. |
TETRA device costs range from high to very high. The TETRA per site core equipment cost for channels is approximately 250Lacs. |
While TETRA is on its evolution path, being proprietary and legacy-based becomes an impediment to power mission-critical systems. These systems need push-to-Talk (MCPTT), Mission Critical Video (MCVideo), and Mission Critical Data (MCData) with validated compliance and interoperability. These systems also need to be device agnostic and allow for a mix and match of devices & accessories, like headsets, microphones, and rugged devices.
With TASSTA MCX, you can improve collaboration, increase productivity and simplify system administration while driving secure, reliable, and resilient communications for government and public security services and other industries.
Connect with us to see how TASSTA MCX can enhance your mission-critical systems and extend core communication functionality with unique features that go beyond 3GPP specifications.