MaXphone to Bridge Handheld Radios and Smartphones
March 9, 2016 | UC San DiegoEstimated reading time: 5 minutes
“CBP is a very diverse organization in terms of what our agents and officers are facing,” noted CBP Program Manager Emily Lattanzi, who attended the review. “What someone is facing on the northern border can be the polar opposite in terms of challenges seen on the southwest border with Mexico, which may vary widely from someone in an airport in middle America. But what I can say is that our guys in rural and remote areas are heavily dependent on the LMR networks. They’re in areas where broadband networks don’t reach, and what the LMRs provide is the number one thing that our guys need: Mission-critical voice communication.”
CBP, working with the DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), contracted with three separate companies – MaXentric, Elbit Systems of America, and Interop Solutions – to develop an approach to combining LMR with LTE smartphones. Johansson noted that similar units developed by other vendors exist, but are cost-prohibitive: some units cost upwards of $7,000 and, unlike the MaXphone, may not allow the capability to talk via the P25 network if the smartphone goes outside 4G or WiFi coverage.
MaXentric, which has proven expertise in developing high-speed wireless technologies, high-power amplifiers and signal processing for both the Department of Defense and NASA, spent the first six months of the project working with the researchers at the Qualcomm Institute to create a proof-of-concept MaXjacket the size of a lab bench.
“In one year we got it down to one single board solution that sits in the current MaXjacket prototype, which is a remarkable effort,” noted Johansson.
“Tactical Communications in the field, whether via LMR or in the future a combination of LMR and LTE, are a lifeline for federal agents and officers and is critical for their safety and the success of missions and operations,” Lattanzi said, adding that the researchers from UC San Diego and MaXentric “made amazing progress” in terms of developing a working prototype.
“MaXentric was one of our smaller bids and they had nothing more than a white paper at the time of the proposal," she continued. "Unlike the other vendors, they didn’t already have a working prototype but they knew what was feasible. The first version of the MaXphone was originally on a breadboard and weighed four times more than the final product. They really came a long way to produce a functional prototype.”
The UC San Diego and MaXentric researchers consider the project a success, says Johansson, “because we did something which was quite unique – we showed you can do a lot more with this type of LMR radio, and we did it entirely with open-source software, meaning we didn’t pay for any software and in many cases, we didn’t change anything in the open-source code we used. We showed it could be something disruptive – none of the other performers built new hardware or a new radio.
"It’s been a very interesting and exciting journey working on this project,” added Johansson. “The MaXphone is one of the most novel approaches we’ve seen so far, and it’s been an amazingly successful prototype.”
From the perspective of the university, “this is a new form of technology transfer,” said Qualcomm Institute Director Ramesh Rao, who is lead principal investigator on the project for UC San Diego.
“Researchers at our institute have experience in the development of apps, radios and power amplifiers, and MaXentric benefits because they can pay our researchers at university wages. This approach to development is what makes our institute so unique.”
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