Transcript NC3A Emergency Telecoms workshop

TETRA for Military
Communications
Dr Michael Street MIEE CEng
Applied CIS Technology Branch
CIS Division
NATO Command, Control & Consultation Agency
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TETRA World Congress 2002
NATO UNCLASSIFIED
20th November 2002
Introduction
• NATO
• NATO C3 Agency
• Military use of civil P(A)MR technology
• Trials – evaluation and assessment
• Military contribution to civil technology and standards
• Interoperability through standardisation
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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NATO’s Three Dimensions
• First and Second dimensions of NATO
•“The fundamental roles of NATO have always been
concerned with security cooperation between member
countries and, in more recent years, with Partner
countries, in the political and defence fields. These
have therefore been regarded as the first and second
"dimensions" of the Alliance.”
• Third dimension
•Scientific and environmental co-operation
•Responding to civil emergencies
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Military use of Civil P(A)MR
• What trails have the military done with TETRA ?
•BiH trial
•Propagation
• Does TETRA Security meet military requirements ?
• Effect of frequency allocation on military use of
TETRA ?
• Interoperability
• Voice coders
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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TETRA - Military Services; Civil Standard
Developed for Public Safety & Security with C3
features
• TETRA services @ Combat Net Radio features
•has many large, security conscious user
groups
–Large user groups -- COTS equipment
• Spectrum
•Operates in Military UHF band
•Spectrum efficient
–Military UHF allocation is mainly 25kHz
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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NC3A TETRA Evaluation System
• System procured in 1999
• Used for evaluation of TETRA
services
• Platform for testing of data
applications
• Interconnection and
Interoperability experience
• Early interoperability trials e.g.
TETRA to Military tactical radio
systems
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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TETRA on Exercises
NC3A TETRA system used
on exercises and trials
• Combined Endeavour
• Strong Resolve
• Used to establish comms infrastructure for exercise
• SFOR trial, Banja Luka
• 2nd (National Communications) Signal Brigade, UK
• JWID 2001
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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NC3A Trial Results
• Easy to deploy
• Setup time approx 15 mins
• Easy to use
• Users like it, minimal training time
• Basic services meet users needs
• Group calls, low rate data etc
• DMO used during road move
• Range governed by terrain
• Limitation is laws of physics, not technology
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Range and Propagation
• Conducted
propagation
prediction in
advance of trial
• Measurements
taken during
trial correlated
with prediction
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Position Reporting
• GPS equipped mobile
terminals in vehicles
• Position sent via
TETRA SDS
• NC3A developed
“Black box” to covert
position format for
military applications
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Military - Civil Interface
• Interface between COTS
TETRA network and
military network
• PC running Linux
• NC3A developed
interface software
• Converts GPS to
OTH/Gold format for
MCIS
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Deployable TETRA System Configuration
AVLS
Gateway
MCCIS
Access
Router
COP, Web, E-mail
App Servers
Mobile
with
GPS
Mobile
Radio
Base
Station
and
Switch
Handheld Voice Users
ISDN
Data
Interface
HiCom
Digital
PABX
COP, Web, E-Mail, Clients
Portable Data Users
System
Management
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TETRA World Congress 2002
Command &
Control
System
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20th November 2002
Secure Voice Communications
• Security is an issue for commercial, public safety and
military users
• Military and public safety users require similar secure
speech services
• Provide security against disruption - eavesdropping,
spoofing and denial of service
• Air interface and end-to-end encryption
• Authentication
• Key management
• Users still want interoperability - securely
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TETRA Security and Fraud Prevention Group
Guidance on implementing interoperable end-to-end
encryption within ETSI Standards
Prepared with public safety, commercial & military input
• SFPG Rec 02 gives guidance
within the standards
• Choice of algorithms up to
users
• Support for TETRA Release 2
(additional vocoders)
• SFPG Security Masterclass
Courtesy of D Parkinson, BT Exact
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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ETSI Standards and SFPG Recommendations
• ETSI standards
give flexibility on
how to implement
End to end
encryption
• SFPG Rec 02
gives guidance
within the
standards
• Choice of
algorithms up to
users
TETRA Standards
SFPG Recommendation 02
Commercial or
national
End to End
Algorithm
(public safety or military)
algorithm
Vocoder
Encryption
(TETRA
Vocoder
ACELP,
AMR or MELPe)
• Support for
TETRA Release 2
(additional
vocoders)
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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End to End Security
• End-to-end Secure TETRA terminals on trial by
NC3A / SFOR / BRITFOR
• SFPG Rec 02 v3
• Support for AES
• Advanced Encryption Standard
• NSA competition, 128 bit
• SFPG Rec 02 can support
additional voice codecs
Courtesy of THALES
• Approval for military use
• Needs approval by the same bodies who approve
Public Safety security
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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NATO Voice Coder
TETRA release 2 requested additional voice codecs
- 3G AMR plus ….
“new voice coders utilising the latest low bit-rate technology”
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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NATO Voice Coder
Stanag 4591
• Pros
• Cons
• Low data rate - 2400 bps
• Frame length is 22.5 ms,
• Performance comparable to TETRA 1
• Suppression of background noise
• Developed for high noise
environments
– Not a convenient size for TETRA
• IPR
• Other information
• Interoperable with other systems
–Many military and some government
systems use voice coder
• 1200 bps mode – not relevant to
TETRA
– Costs too great
• IPR free
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TETRA World Congress 2002
– Benefits too small
NATO UNCLASSIFIED
20th November 2002
The New NATO Voice Coder:
Tested in a wide range of environments
Quiet
Modern Office
Gaussian noise
MCE field shelter
HMMWV
Bradley Fighting Vehicle
LeClerc Tank
Automobile
Blackhawk helicopter
Mirage 2000
F-15
.. and in English, French, German,
Dutch, Polish and Turkish
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Selecting the new NATO Voice Coder
3 test labs
x 9 coders (+ 8 MNRU levels)
x  5 tests
x  12 noise conditions
x  88 files per test
• Over 28,000 files
• Over 13 GB of processed speech data
• Over 200 hours of speech
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Military vs Civil Vocoders
80
60
Quiet
40
20
0
COTS X (6k)
COTS Y (4.5k)
COTS Z (4.5k)
S4591 (2.4k)
Female speaker
Military voice coder (STANAG 4591) offers comparable or improved
performance over voice coders used in existing COTS PMR systems.
Throughput requirements are much reduced.
Designed to work in noisy environments.
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Further information on STANAG 4591
Stanag 4591 test and selection process
Street MD and Collura JS, “The test and selection of the future NATO narrow band voice coder”, RCMCIS
- NATO Regional Conference on Military CIS, Warsaw, Zegrze, October 2001.
Street MD, “Selection of the future NATO narrow band voice coder”, NC3A Technical Notes 881 & 912.
http://nc3a.info/Voice
MELPe: the selected voice coder
Collura JS and Rahikka DJ, “Interoperable secure voice communications in tactical systems, IEE coll. on
Speech coding algorithms for radio channels, London, February 2000.
An overview of the MELP voice coder and its use in military environments
http://www.iee.org/OnComms/pn/communications
Collura JS, Rahikka DJ, Fuja TE, Sridhara D and Fazel T, “Error coding strategies for MELP vocoder in
wireless and ATM environments”, IEE coll. on Speech coding algorithms for radio channels, London,
February 2000.
Performance of MELP with a variety of different error correction mechanisms
http://www.iee.org/OnComms/pn/communications
NC3A’s STANAG 4591 Server
http://s4591.nc3a.nato.int
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Frequency Allocation in Europe
380
383 385
390
393 395
400
Public Safety
& Security
Currently
Reserved
NATO Military
• MoU on common frequency allocation has been signed by most European
countries
• Some nations sharing allocation and responsibility for public safety and
commercial use - operational benefits
• Could share military and civil allocations - operational benefits, political risks
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TETRA World Congress 2002
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Does TETRA meet military requirements ?
• Services
• Applications
• Ease of deployment
• Interoperability
• Security
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20th November 2002