First Responders Case Study – JerseyNet for the State of New Jersey

JerseyNet for the State of New Jersey

Customer: State of New Jersey

Timeline: 2014-2018

Products/Solutions included:

LTE Deployable Broadband Core and RAN with mobile trailers

Project:

Following the events of September 11, 2001, the 9/11 Commission recommended the establishment of a nationwide interoperable public safety communications network, which would become Firstnet as it is known today. The State of New Jersey, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and prior to the existence of Firstnet, experienced severely disrupted wireless communications infrastructure. They aimed to become one of the Firstnet early builders to provide an entirely deployable public safety broadband network capability that could be rolled into action in an emergency and sustained for an extended period of time.

Solution:

JerseyNet was a deployable LTE network that provided 4G LTE communications coverage to Homeland Security and other agency first responders in the State of New Jersey. Oceus supported this project in all phases of the systems development life-cycle from concept development through operations and maintenance.

Oceus’ communications system provided public safety users with priority access to a private network and a hardened system to ensure resiliency during natural disasters, incidents, and man-made threats. The JerseyNet project represented the nation’s first public safety-grade 4G LTE broadband network, providing Homeland Security first responders a secure, resilient, and sustainable network that supports mission-critical capabilities.

The JerseyNet project provided network elements that were fielded on trailers, and vehicles to be quickly deployed where and when coverage was needed. The end-to-end network infrastructure facilitated secure and reliable communications in remote locations in emergency response situations and large-scale public gatherings.

Under this contract, Oceus led efforts in the following tasks:

• Designing and engineering a turnkey statewide LTE Network, including the detailed mechanical design of the deployable trailers
• SWAP analysis
• First article prototyping
• Critical design review and acceptance testing
• Conducting RF engineering including propagation engineering for each deployable node to produce a predictive coverage analysis based on topography
• Conducting empirical drive tests of the post deployment areas to assure optimal performance, providing integrated logistics support
• Developing CONOPS, procedure manuals for the support and maintenance program to ensure continual operation of the deployed network, which were defined and practiced prior to system turnover to the state

For the deployment phase, Oceus performed all manufacturing and production of the LTE deployable nodes and ONmission network management system, performed full logistics management services to deliver network components to the State of New Jersey, and placed them at each site location. Oceus integrated each node to a centrally located state operations center to provide a contiguous network and delivered operations and maintenance training to state personnel.

Oceus built and deployed 33 trailer cell on wheels (COW) containing RAN elements of the broadband network, four system on wheels (SOW) in trailer and van configurations, containing CORE and RAN elements of the broadband network, and centralized network monitoring and redundant fixed core network elements within an operations center environment.

The deployable nodes were compact enough to be stored in parking garages during adverse conditions and robust enough to be deployed for over two years, across three regions of the State of New Jersey. This demonstrated a durable sustainment capability and provided consistent 4G LTE capability to first responders for regular usage and for special events support, including public events such as sporting and concert events