TETRA  |   LTE  |   P25  |  2016-02-22

Dali Wireless unveils Matrix™ PS to support migration from P25 and TETRA to LTE

Source: The Critical Communications Review | Gert Jan Wolf editor

The Matrix Public Safety (PS) was designed to support the shift from voice applications carried on P25 and TETRA networks to more data-intensive applications supported by LTE broadband networks.

Dali Wireless, Inc., a global provider of the advanced all-digital RF Router® that transcends Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), today unveils Dali Matrix™ Public Safety (PS), a modular platform which, while providing them with a seamless migration path to address evolving public safety broadband requirements including LTE, FirstNet in the U.S. and Emergency Services Network (ESN) in the U.K.

Matrix PS is the next generation public safety solution that transcends the traditional RF-over-fiber analog DAS or Bi-Directional Amplifiers (BDAs). With its patented digital signal processing and software re-configurability, Matrix PS enables a unified broadband/narrowband communications infrastructure supporting the interoperability of Land Mobile Radios (LMRs) and broadband systems like LTE and Wi-Fi.

“The evolution to LTE-based public safety from the current narrowband systems will happen gradually. The requirements placed on next-gen public safety solutions demands that it is not only scalable, but also offers high availability and high reliability critical for first responders to communicate and do their jobs optimally,” said Nick Marshall, Research Director at ABI Research. “The solution must be able to support the needs of newer buildings, venues, and other service areas, and to be future-ready so that it can seamlessly adapt to newer bands and protocols. Dali Matrix PS offers an economical alternative to traditional RF-over-fiber DAS and BDAs in terms of scalability, flexibility and TCO.”

Matrix PS is a simple, modular architecture that not only provide clear and distortion-free transmission of radio communication to ensure maximum security and system resilience, but also redundancy with automatic switchover and fiber path diversity to ensure that there is no single point of failure to impair the critical communications among first responders. Matrix PS also enables channelization to be done remotely using software via the graphical user interface (GUI). With this flexibility, public safety operators and system integrators can deploy systems in select channels and bandwidth, and then easily reconfigure the unit via software upgrades to operate within another set of channels or bandwidths in the future.

With 320 MHz of aggregated bandwidth per wavelength, Matrix PS supports not only public safety in-building coverage, but also cellular (2G, 3G, 4G, and even 5G) services and IP traffic, including Wi-Fi Access Points and HD security cameras. The platforms’ inherent flexibility and scalability allows this to be done over the same fiber to significantly reduce fiber plant usage and installation costs. Providing public safety operators and integrators with the option to choose whether to implement in-building cellular and public safety coverage as separate or integrated systems opens up more opportunities for them to provide coverage required at the lowest Total Cost of Ownership.

“Public safety requirements are experiencing a transition, shifting from voice applications carried on P25 and TETRA networks to more data-intensive applications supported by LTE broadband networks. The Dali Matrix was built with this paradigm change in mind,” said Albert Lee, CEO of Dali Wireless. “The Matrix PS was designed from the ground-up with flexibility and scalability in mind to empower public safety operators and integrators to meet the voice and data requirements of first responders today while truly future-proofing their networks for tomorrow. This is especially important with the FirstNet and Emergency Services Network initiatives.”