Project 25 Standards Development
Project Description
SNAPSHOT
The open standards developed in TIA (Telecommunications Industry Association) TR-8/Project 25 (Project 25 was established by joint efforts of the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO), the National Association of State Telecommunications Directors (NASTD), selected Federal Agencies and the National Communications System (NCS). It was established to address the need for common digital public safety radio communications standards for First Responders and Homeland Security/Emergency Response professionals.) define how LMR (land mobile radio) equipment and systems should operate, and more importantly, how key system interface standards that, when implemented, would allow radios and infrastructure from different manufacturers to interoperate. The catalog of competitively offered P25 (Project 25) equipment continues to grow, with broad adoption by public safety organizations in the U.S. and by public safety organizations in over 54 countries. On behalf of DHS/OIC (Department of Homeland Security/Office of Interoperability and Compatibility), the PSCR (Public Safety Communications Research) program actively participates in the development of P25 standards in support of practitioner requirements for their use of digital land mobile radios.
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| P25 DSR (Project 25 Documents & Standards Reference) console decision chart example with references to tables listing P25 standards documents. Click to enlarge image. |
BACKGROUND
P25 is a user-driven effort to develop a suite of standards for digital land-mobile radio systems—a critical communications resource for first responders, and these practitioners actively participate in the standards development process alongside the LMR manufacturers. P25 was created in 1989 in order to enable public safety agencies to communicate with each other, regardless of their LMR system manufacturers, and is the only open voluntary consensus standards development group focused on emergency responder digital LMR communications.
AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH
PSCR has facilitated the accelerated development of P25 standards to meet the increasing user needs for functionally enhanced P25 equipment and systems, and to satisfy Congressional requirements concerning allocation of Federal funding for P25-compliant equipment and systems. PSCR leverages its subject matter engineering expertise to:
Create draft standards and assist in the development of technical requirements for P25 standards
Hold various leadership positions in the standards development groups and committees and participate in formal P25 voting activities
Evaluate technical proposals submitted by manufacturers and conduct relevant testing programs to validate the technical submissions
Maintain the P25 Documents & Standards Reference, which provides users, manufacturers, and government agencies a roadmap for charting progress and prioritizing standards development
VALUE TO PUBLIC SAFETY
Standards development for Congressionally mandated interoperability interfaces allows for more vendor solutions being offered to the public safety community. As standards development moves forward, public safety practitioners continue to need objective technical experts that can advocate on their behalf during the technical development of the standards. PSCR ensures that public safety’s technical needs are being accurately represented with the vendors and in P25.
RESULTS
The PSCR program’s efforts in P25 standards development have helped accelerate standards publication for key interoperability interfaces, which, in turn, has led to a larger number of vendor solutions offered in the P25 marketplace.
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Right-click Project 25 Standards Development to save or download this one-page project summary PDF (Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format) file.
For more information, contact: Andrew Thiessen.
