• DISASTER RESPONSENew, Portable Antenna Could Help Restore Communication After Disasters

    By Laura Castañón

    Researchers from Stanford and the American University of Beirut have developed a lightweight, portable antenna that can communicate with satellites and devices on the ground, making it easier to coordinate rescue and relief efforts in disaster-prone areas.

  • EMERGENCY CALLSMaking Emergency Calls More Secure

    As the nation’s cellular networks and technological infrastructure advance, customers are treated to better coverage and faster service. On the flip side, these changes also can create new opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit unforeseen gaps in security.

  • EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONLocal, Temporary 5G Network to Help Fight Forest Fires

    When it comes to activities such as fighting forest fires, monitoring construction sites or providing multimedia services at sports and other mass events, a reliable, secure 5G campus network is often needed locally and temporarily to ensure maximum network coverage on the entire site.

  • EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONStrengthening First Responder Communications

    A critical element of protecting the U.S. is securing the ability of first responders to communicate. A DHS-run exercise aimed to help responders prepare to mitigate potential jamming incidents.

  • Communication technologyLow-Cost NIST Demo Links Public Safety Radios to Broadband Wireless Network

    Engineers have built a low-cost computer system that connects older public safety radios with the latest wireless communications networks, showing how first responders might easily take advantage of broadband technology offering voice, text, instant messages, video and data capabilities.

  • Emergency communicationsNovel compact antenna for communicating where radios fail

    A new type of pocket-sized antenna could enable mobile communication in situations where conventional radios don’t work, such as under water, through the ground and over very long distances through air. The 4-inch-tall device could be used in portable transmitters for rescue missions and other challenging applications demanding high mobility.

  • 911 callsIsrael’s Carbyne, RapidSOS partner to improve 911 calls

    By Naama Barak

    Dialing 911 in an emergency is something that we’ve all been instructed to do since childhood. And old-fashioned, simple dialing is what most of us are still doing, even in an age of far more sophisticated technology. Next-gen public safety tech company will provide call takers with more informative real-time data to help first responders locate and treat callers.

  • ResilienceMeasuring progress toward resilience more effectively

    A new report from the National Academies of Sciences recommends steps U.S. communities can take to better measure their progress in building resilience to disasters, including measuring resilience around multiple dimensions of a community, and incentivizing the measurement of resilience. The report also recommends that the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program develop a major, coordinated initiative around building or enhancing community resilience across the Gulf of Mexico region.

  • Emergency communicationSolar flares disrupted radio communications during 2017 hurricane relief effort

    An unlucky coincidence of space and Earth weather in early September 2017 caused radio blackouts for hours during critical hurricane emergency response efforts, according to a new study. The new research, which details how the events on the Sun and Earth unfolded side-by-side, could aid in the development of space weather forecasting and response.

  • First respondersNew app tracks locations, vitals, keeping first responders safe

    When first responders are on a mission, being able to quickly and easily track the location of their fellow responders can be challenging, especially in situations where the team is spread out. Many responders are only able to coordinate their locations by radioing each other or the command post and providing a very detailed message on their exact location. This can be time consuming and can change every second if they are in an emergency situation or on a call. The Watchtower mobile application allows users to track and report their location using the GPS already built into a smartphone.

  • Emergency communicationHackers attacking 4G LTE networks could send fake emergency alerts

    Researchers have identified several new vulnerabilities in 4G LTE networks, potentially allowing hackers to forge the location of a mobile device and fabricate messages. Ten new and nine prior attacks were outlined in a new study, including the authentication relay attack, which enables an adversary to connect to core networks without the necessary credentials. This allows the adversary to impersonate and fake the location of a victim device.

  • Secure communicationA quantum leap for quantum communication

    Quantum communication, which ensures absolute data security, is one of the most advanced branches of the “second quantum revolution.” In quantum communication, the participating parties can detect any attempt at eavesdropping by resorting to the fundamental principle of quantum mechanics — a measurement affects the measured quantity. Thus, the mere existence of an eavesdropper can be detected by identifying the traces that his measurements of the communication channel leave behind. The major drawback of quantum communication today is the slow speed of data transfer, which is limited by the speed at which the parties can perform quantum measurements. Researchers have devised a method that overcomes this speed limit, and enables an increase in the rate of data transfer by more than 5 orders of magnitude.

  • Secure communicationImproving military communications with digital phased-arrays at millimeter wave

    There is increasing interest in making broader use of the millimeter wave frequency band for communications on small mobile platforms where narrow antenna beams from small radiating apertures provide enhanced communication security. Today’s millimeter wave systems, however, are not user friendly and are designed to be platform specific, lacking interoperability and are thus reserved for only the most complex platforms. New program aims to create multi-beam, digital phased-array technology, operating at 18-50 GHz to enhance secure communications between military platforms.

  • Communication & spectrum challengesDARPA’s Software Defined Radio (SDR) Hackfest explores solutions for spectrum challenges

    The DARPA Bay Area Software Defined Radio (SDR) Hackfest came to a close on Friday, 17 November at the NASA Ames Conference Center in Moffett Field, California. During the weeklong event, over 150 members of the SDR community came together to discuss, innovate, and ideate around the future of software radio technology and its potential to address challenging communications issues that are emerging due to the increasingly congested electromagnetic (EM) spectrum and the proliferation of wireless-enabled devices.

  • Disaster recoveryRestoring wireless communications to Puerto Rico and remote, disaster-struck areas

    According to a Federal Communications Commission status report issued last week following a survey of Hurricane Maria damage, nearly 50 percent of Puerto Rico’s cell sites remain out of service, with many counties operating at less than 25 percent of full service. Daniel Bliss, director of the Center for Wireless Information Systems and Computational Architectures (WISCA) at Arizona State University, offers insights about building a wireless infrastructure with the capacity to provide immediate, ongoing communications access during emergency situations.