Toward Future Public Safety Communications: The Broadband Wireless Trunking Project in China

With the broadband wireless professional communications stepping into its start-up period, a project called broadband wireless trunking (BWT) was launched in China. The purpose of the BWT project is to support research, development, standardization, and applicable evaluation for broadband wireless professional communications, with the major applications focused on future public protection and disaster relief (PPDR). In this article, the features, performance requirements, and technical challenges of PPDR are discussed. To meet these special requirements, a system architecture with uniform network interfaces is proposed in the BWT project. Under this architecture, multiple wireless accesses can be performed corporately. Some key techniques for the BWT, the roadmap of the standardization process, and an experimental platform to verify the BWT standard draft are introduced.