With this award GUARD becomes a major focus of the NTA, which manages and oversees the program, and of an industry team led by Rosettex. The award marks the transition of this groundbreaking homeland security initiative to the GUARD vision for a "Nationally Relevant Regional Model" of First Responder Communications and Decision Support Capability.
GUARD builds on two prior years of prototyping and demonstration as the "Smart Dissemination Networks" (Smart Nets) program, developed in conjunction with users from the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and the New York Police Department (NYPD). GUARD extends the capabilities, team and technologies already in place to establish a pre-operational prototype in New York City.
"Rosettex builds teams of Best-In-Class commercial partners to provide high-value solutions to the government," said Mark Lister, Managing Director for Rosettex. "The GUARD program demonstrates the power of this approach in unleashing the dedication and creativity of our commercial industry partners."
The GUARD plan calls for extending the enhanced Smart Nets capability with a second interconnected regional solution in St. Louis, and a third in Washington or Las Vegas. GUARD will provide an open platform and model that communities around the country can evaluate and adapt, to best serve local requirements.
To mark the transition to GUARD, Rosettex partner Thirteen/WNET New York, the flagship public television station of the New York metropolitan area, recently hosted a major demonstration of the prototype Smart Nets digital emergency response communications system. The demonstration showed legislators and federal officials, simultaneously in New York and Washington, DC, the powerful operational capabilities of the system in a real-world urban emergency context.
For the demonstration, the Smart Nets team ran a scenario simulating an emergency situation in New York City. Officials from defense, homeland security and emergency services communities, monitored the demonstration from Washington via two-way satellite link, and had a first-hand look at how Smart Nets makes use of the Educational Broadband Service Band (EBS, formerly Instructional Television Fixed Service) to provide dependable two-way wireless broadband communications to fire, police, EMS, and other personnel in the field.
GUARD is promoting use of this spectrum as a key, innovative element of the broader national solution. The EBS spectrum provides dramatically wider, licensed bandwidth than conventional emergency response communications systems, enabling broadband voice, video and data to mobile response vehicles and individual First Responders. This spectrum is licensed across the country to educational institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and public broadcasters such as Thirteen, each dedicated to serving their local communities. By taking advantage of this in-place, national infrastructure, GUARD enables rapid, lower cost implementation of advanced systems to protect our communities.
"GUARD pushes the envelope for capability and technology in a number of areas, with only a very modest budget, by Government standards." said David Ihrie, Chief Technology Officer for Rosettex. "Seeing this system work in the urban canyons of New York is phenomenal." GUARD delivers world-class applications for first responders from Raytheon and Grey Island. These applications communicate using WiMAX-Ready Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) equipment provided by NextNet, utilizing Thirteen/WNET's licensed spectrum. With the addition of guaranteed video and file delivery from KenCast, GUARD is able to deliver high quality information directly to responders in vehicles heading for an incident.
GUARD is a collaboration between Rosettex Technology & Ventures Group and its partners, including Thirteen/WNET New York, Raytheon, NextNet Wireless, KenCast, and Grey Island Systems, Inc. Rosettex is a joint venture between SRI International and Sarnoff Corporation. GUARD represents the third year of development for this system, under a contract from the National Technology Alliance (NTA).
The National Technology Alliance (NTA) is a U. S. Government program established in 1987 to influence commercial and dual-use technology development. The NTA's purpose is to discover, initiate or accelerate commercial technology development to meet U.S. national security and defense technology needs. The National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency serves as the Executive Agent of the NTA on behalf of the U.S. Government.
