Natural disasters, or those caused by man, are one of the biggest threats to public safety. Buildings toppling, floods occurring, fires blazing and people needing rescuing are just some of the dangerous and crucial works that may need to be carried out during a disaster, but things can get even worse if there is no mobile communication between workers or those needing the help. Many companies are stepping up their safety initiatives and a new standard released three months ago, 3GPP Rel.12 standard is designed specifically to help keep those critical lines of communication opened. Samsung is the first to give a live demonstration using its Public Safety solution called Public Safety LTE, or PS-LTE for short.
Samsung demonstrated an end-to-end service with its newly designed base station, LTE Core, IMS Core, Application server, along with its devices, in an effort to show that Samsung Electronics is working hard to achieve a solution in case of a tragic situation. Youngky Kim, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics said, “The live demonstration of our PS-LTE solution is a significant achievement. It takes us one step closer to successfully participating and building the world’s first nationwide Public Safety network with LTE Technology, and we are confident in accomplishing this thanks to our leading product portfolio and constant innovation.”
This electronic Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS) system is designed to multicast a signal to a large number of subscribers simultaneously without any delays or disconnects. This allows more people in the field to successfully communicate with one another in order to help during the disaster. It better utilizes the available bandwidth – without eMBMS, only a dozen devices can stream the HD video at a time, but with eMBMS, 1000 devices can utilize the same bandwidth. This allows all facets of essential personal to participate, such as firefighters, police and medical personal.
Samsung is looking forward to further advancing its leadership with Release 13 with more public safety related items, such as Mission Critical Push-t-Talk (MCPTT) and enhancing the device-to-device (eD2D) standardization. Since February 2015, Samsung Electronics took on the role as a Vice Chairman of SA6 (Service and System Aspect), which takes care of MCPTT (Mission Critical Push-To-Talk) Standardization. Hopefully these safety measures will never actually be used, but by developing and test now, we can be prepared for any disaster.