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EMSWORLD.com | JULY 2016 55 From the ridge, it continues to accept and respond to commands while it transmits photos of the search- ers' progress. Now imagine you're with a SWAT team on the scene of a live shooting at a multi-story urban ware- house where two police officers have gone silent during a drug bust. Using 3D mapping software, the SWAT team locates both officers in different rooms on the second and third floors. The software enables a responder using a laptop to communicate with small sensors attached to the individual officers' uniforms. An incident commander can view a 3D line drawing of the warehouse, including the locations of its internal features and showing the locations of the officers. Additional software communicates with more sensors, this time attached to flexible plastic panels (resembling x-ray film) inserted in the officers' body armor. The film sensors detect and map the officers' penetrating torso wounds. Finally, suppose you're at the scene of a wildland fire in a remote area where there is no phone coverage. A state patrol officer opens the lid of a ruggedized suitcase and sets up a complete communications cen- ter. Within 10 minutes, you can communicate voice and data at will with any resources you might need, on scene or not, ranging from the closest trauma center to FEMA. Your field units can communicate with one another using assigned frequencies on their normal LMR (land mobile radio) handy-talkies, or via tough, highly ruggedized LTE-equipped smartphones. In fact, they can also use PTT (push-to-talk) software on their phones to communicate in whichever mode they choose. Agencies operating on Band 14 will be using LTE devices with five times the transmission power of a commercial cell phone. The system's design is intended to provide 97% geographic coverage, and offers to address challenges like: » Incidents in densely populated ones featuring large crowds using hundreds of personal cell phones simultaneously; » Interagency communication needs, including data such as real-time photos and some video; and » Mission-critical need-to-know things like emerging weather patterns, f lood threats, hydrant locations, hospital availability, routes of ingress and egress, vehicle locations, personnel tracking and overall scope of the incident. Can LTE cellular technology supersede the need for current radio systems? Experts disagree. Craig Scherer, a fire systems technical specialist at the Denver Fire Department's Communications Center, thinks the system would be too vulnerable to interference from public cell phone use. He said latency, the delay between transmitting a signal and receiving a usable answer, would also impair critical communications. Ed Mills, FirstNet's Colorado outreach and educa- tion manager, who moderated the conference, said he thinks the technology could make LMR radios obsolete in as little as three years. "LTE is fast," says Mills. "It's line-of-sight, and it happens at the speed of light. A transmission from the West Coast to the East Coast (of the United States) would happen in a fraction of a second. There's no need for a signal to bounce off of a satellite." Mills said one variable of implemention time is that it depends on how promptly major commercial carriers like Verizon and AT&T; could comply with the system's growth. Recent history clearly illustrates the importance and effectiveness of this technology. Sonim, Mutua- link, Parallel Wireless, Verizon and numerous other vendors partnered to help local public safety agen- cies provide Band 14 coverage for the Rose Parade on January 1, 2016, in Pasadena and at Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016, in San Francisco. Both of those ESChat provides a secure PTT (Push To Talk) utility Unmanned Aircraft Systems unmanned quadcopter