Cassidian Mobile TETRA LTE System Completes Functional Trails

The German Armed Forces have successfully conducted first functional trials of Cassidian's mobile terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA) Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio system, designed to enable simultaneous voice and broadband data services for users.

The first mobile broadband radio system demonstrated its capability in the 400MHz frequency band.

The system has successfully passed its first functional test, as part of the German Armed Forces' highly mobile cellular networks study, Hochmobile Zellulare Netzwerke (HochZeN), following its acceptance by the Armed Forces' Technical Centre for Information Technology and Electronics (WTD 81).

As part of the study, two radio cells combining TETRA and LTE were successfully tested in two of the armed forces' EAGLE IV armoured vehicles over a period of two weeks and validated its capability.

During the functional test, more than 100 assessment cases such as radio range, data transfer rate, performance while moving and interfaces to other systems have been used to test aspects including connection of vehicle and handheld radios to stationary and moving radio cells.

The results for radio coverage were above expectations while the data rates were dependent on the distance and antenna used and lay between 100KBps and 2MBps.

The systems are scheduled to be further developed over the next 12 months and will undergo further field tests by the Bundeswehr in 2015.