Monsoon floods inundate 9.4 million acres of cropland in Pakistan last August, killing almost 2,000 people and leaving over two million homeless. An earthquake shakes Java Island in November, instantly killing 162 people and burying thousands under collapsed buildings. large fires in Australia caused extreme damage including millions of hectares burnt, immeasurable impact on unique environments and fatalities.
Emergency medical technicians, paramedics, firefighters and police officers are the professional first responders to catastrophes such as these. Always impeding their efforts is the utter confusion: choking smoke, intense heat, broken gas lines, lethal hot wires, collapsing flood barriers, falling masonry, disintegrating buildings, trembling ground. Phone lines and cellular networks may be knocked out or have never been in place. “To help most effectively and to protect themselves, first responders need full and accurate information about what they’re facing, and they need this information in real time,” says Ariel Kandel, CEO of Commtact Ltd. “They need to see what’s happening as it happens, and to maintain contact with one another on a high quality network, secure from cyberattack.”
Commtact is bringing exactly this onto the market early next year. Known as CommNet, the new system is equipped to gather information from sensors, robots and drones, however large and chaotic the catastrophe, with speed and precision, and to relay this information to the responders via video, voice and data in real time, in situations where even a 20-second delay can make the difference between life and death.
“Commtact’s knowledge and expertise come from its 18 years’ experience in providing advanced, mission-critical wireless communications solutions for defense and security forces,” says Kandel, “Our innovative wireless systems are deployed in dozens of aerials, ground and naval platforms around the world, proving themselves daily in the field.”
Tailored wireless communication solutions
“We aimed from the outset to be a one-stop shop for comprehensive wireless and data-link products, systems and applications, so we’ve always kept our design, development and manufacturing practices and processes broad and flexible,” emphasizes Kandel. “Our proprietary technologies comprise radio-frequency modules, transmitters, receivers, digital modems, antennas, tracking systems, software and firmware packages, integrated digital and analog data-link systems and specially tailored wireless communication solutions for aerial, naval and ground applications.”
It’s this technology knowledge that we’re now bringing to first responders as CommNet,” says Dror Hacohen, Commtact’s vice president for sales & marketing. “With our vast experience in the field, where criteria for performance and quality are very high, we were able to develop a reliable, relevant system whose costs are relatively modest and is based on technology deployment for over a decade. This all puts us at the very front.
Maximum mission performance in highly demanding environments
Based on the company’s experience in the military sector, CommNet can connect large numbers of responders across several kilometers, through both video, audio and data. It operates over a wide spectrum of radio frequencies and channel widths, delivering its high throughput over a secure private network.
“It gives first responders an independent, reliable, real-time mobile communications network on which to share information alongside constant situational awareness without time lapse,” declares Kandel. “It enables them to coordinate, understand conditions instantly, ascertain whether there are human casualties. Even with a large number of users, it provides consistently high quality of service. Put more succinctly: it saves lives.”
Heading to the civilian market
CommNet is the first civilian product-line born of Commtact’s long experience in the defense sector. A second, now being readied, will be for complex high-end industries — air and sea ports are examples — which rely heavily on automation but whose communications infrastructures are suboptimal. The new system is designed to help their operational and support teams with safety issues irrespective of the existing infrastructure.
“While the communications perspective for industry and first response is of course very different from that of defense sector, the quality of services (QeS) is the same,” says Hacohen. “Companies worldwide, from Europe to the Far East, are waiting for our civilian solutions.”
“And that’s not where we’ll stop,” says Kandel. “We see a place for our data-link technology throughout the civilian market, our systems continually upgrading and developing in pace RF technological advance. As a world leader in wireless communication, we see Commtact's systems embedded in all robotics systems, interfacing with artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies.”
In collaboration with Commtact
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