Wireless technologies advances for emergency and rural communications

he need for integrated voice and wideband data communication services is ever growing in several fields of human endeavor. The main goal of this special issue is to outline the influence of this need in the area of wireless communications for public safety and emergency, as well as networks and technologies for delivery of wideband services to rural communities. The two topics have been largely investigated (see, e.g., [1‐6, references therein]) during the last two decades. The quality of communications services offered by communications systems for public safety applications, such as land mobile radio systems (LMRs), is generally lagging behind that of commercial systems. Due to cost of radio coverage and trunking, the quality of the services offered by existing commercial mobile systems in rural areas, characterized by low densities of populations, is well below that offered by operators in urban and suburban areas. Thus, current communications systems for rural areas provide basic telephone services and are rarely suitable for effective data access. The necessity of advanced communications services in public safety operations has led to the evolution of LMR systems toward a new generation of professional mobile radio (PMR) and standard communication systems. Presently, many of these communication systems are based on terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) specifications. TETRA technology has gained wide acceptance (especially in Europe), and is considered one of the most mature and prominent technologies for the PMR and even public access mobile radio (PAMR) markets. TETRA specifications have been conceived to support the requirements of public safety agencies, such as law enforcement, ambulance services, civil emergency management/disaster recovery, fire services, coast guard services, search and rescue services, and government administration. Its specifications are constantly being evolved