By Mary Rose Roberts

The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) today announced the completion of its final multiband radio pilot, conducted in partnership with federal and state public-safety agencies in Illinois. The pilot tested the Harris Unity XG-100, the second multiband radio after Thales Communications’ multiband radio to go through testing. Findings from the pilots will be compiled into a low-level report then developed into best-practices user and buyers’ guides, which are expected to be available to first-responder agencies in May 2012.

Participating agencies included the Chicago police, fire and emergency-management departments; the Illinois State Police; the Cook County Sherriff’s Department, FEMA; and the Illinois Mutual Aid Box Alarm System.

DHS conducted earlier pilots at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in May and at the Phoenix International Raceway’s NASCAR events in April, where public safety worked alongside private industry to test the radio’s functionality, said Thomas Chirhart, manager of the multiband radio program at the DHS S&T. The effort focused on testing and evaluating the radios across multiple systems — analog, conventional, digital and Project 25 — and multiple public-safety agencies. It also focused specifically on meeting the requirements of the fire service “because of the unique environment in which they work,” Chirhart said.

“The fire service was probably the leader in identifying requirements because of their unique mission, including that the multiband meet the intrinsically safe requirement,” he said. “They need a piece of equipment that can survive in the harsh heat environment in which they work.”

The agency now will begin developing a draft report of its findings, which will be used to build a procurement guide for first responders interested in the multiband technology, including what equipment features they need to meet their mission requirements.

“Once it is complete, the fire chief or EOC manager can go to their senior leadership or city or county government leadership and have a document about the equipment that lists the feature set and is easy to understand,” he said

Currently, Thales, Harris and Motorola have entered the multiband radio market. However, there has been interest by additional market leaders, Chirhart said.

“[This] is great news because our goal is to encourage manufactures to enter the marketplace with a multiband product,” he said. “Because through competition, the costs drop accordingly and perhaps will be more affordable to the user community.”