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Bypassing the Signal Traffic: The Solution for Mass Warning Systems via Cellphone

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26513/

Following the 2010 Tsunami in Japan, there has been a push to establish more efficient disaster early warning systems to better warn the inhabitants in areas likely affected by the disasters.  NTT Docomo, Japan’s dominant phone carrier is implementing a Cell Broadcast System or SMS-CB; this system unlike point precision sms where each wireless signal is point projected to a specific phone, will send out a non directional dispersion of signals via specific cell phone towers.  This system is capable of reaching millions of people in a specific region where traditional sms systems would slow down to a crawl.

The network traffic approach works well for this system.  But instead of people being the variable factor, it is the traffic of signals.  For information to reach the specific cell phone in the region of interest, a signal is emitted to a cell tower, and using the network of signal towers, land and wireless, it reaches the phone and a connection is made.  However, each of these cell towers can support only a specific band width of signal and during times of frequent communication, the system is known to crash.  The more traditional SMS signals passing through a single edge, the slower the travel time and the longer it takes for the emergency signal to reach the cell phones.  For an example, during new years in Japan the cell service announced that it would suspend its service for the first 1 hour of the New Year due to the overwhelming number of calls made following the coming of the New Year that crashed the system in 2008.  To maintain a large bandwidth, cell companies build redundancy towers in the metropolitan regions so there are multiple ways for a cell signal to reach its desired recipient when one cell node crashes.  However, with emergency situations such as the tsunami in Japan, millions of people needed tsunami warnings in both metropolitan and rural areas, and no matter how many redundant towers were made in the region, a mass warning system through the traditional sms would have overwhelmed the system and would have reduced it to a crawl.  SMS-CB works differently because a single signal with a designated trigger is sent via the network to specific cell node where the cell tower itself broadcasts the message to the centralized region.  Each of these trigger messages are the size of a single SMS and can be broadcasted via independent source if needed be directly to the cell node of interest completely avoiding the singal traffic on the conventional system.  With SMS-CB, a central warning center is capable of sending millions of warnings at a fraction of the band width, making even mass dispersion of warnings in rural areas possible.

The system, many believe, has the potential of being implemented in other regions of the world, each with its own region specific conflicts.  In Israel, EViglio is attempting to implement this technology as a warning system for incoming missile attacks.  Global cell providers will see this as the solution for the modern age.  With this technology the safety of an early warning system can reach even the most distant reaches of the world.

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