TETRA Radio Dispatch and Status Messaging

Overview#

A dispatcher should be able to send a status code or a structured dispatch ticket to a crew over the existing TETRA radio fleet and see the acknowledgement land on the same canonical incident timeline as a mobile MDT acknowledgement, treating the radio and the responder app as equivalent operational channels rather than two disconnected worlds.

This module bridges the dispatcher console and the responder mobile to Ireland's PSEN / National Digital Radio Service TETRA fleet. It sends status messages and structured dispatch tickets via TETRA Short Data Service, polls GPS positions, requests individual or group voice calls, and stages a future migration path toward ETSI Mission-Critical Push-to-Talk over broadband. Real TETRA radio integration requires a commercial partner agreement with the radio network operator (PSEN, RTE Network, Sepura, or Motorola depending on procurement), so this module ships the integration shape and a stub gateway publishing CloudEvents for development; the production adapter activates behind a feature flag once the partner contract is in place.

Last Reviewed: 2026-05-05 Last Updated: 2026-05-05

Key Features#

• SDS Status Messaging: Send and receive TETRA Short Data Service status codes between the dispatcher console and crew radio terminals, mapping to the agency's existing status-code book.

• Structured Dispatch Tickets: Push a structured dispatch payload to the radio so the crew sees the job, address, and incident reference on the terminal screen rather than a voice-only callout.

• GPS Position Polling: Request current position from a radio terminal on demand, complementing AVL feeds and giving dispatch a fallback when the mobile MDT is offline.

• Voice Call Coordination: Request individual or group voice calls from the dispatcher console without leaving the incident view.

• Channel-Agnostic Acknowledgements: A radio acknowledgement and an MDT acknowledgement emit the same a unified dispatch acknowledgement event event on the canonical incident, so the timeline does not care which channel the crew used.

• Inter-System Interface Support: Cross-network communication scaffolding through TETRA ISI for mutual-aid scenarios that span more than one TETRA network.

• Migration Path to MCPTT: The same dispatch and status surfaces can target broadband Mission-Critical Push-to-Talk in the future without rewriting the dispatcher workflow.

• Stub Gateway for Development: A development-mode SDS gateway publishes the same CloudEvents the production adapter would emit, so application code can be built and tested before the partner contract is in place.

Use Cases#

• Routine Status Updates: A crew presses a status code on the radio to mark themselves en route, on scene, or available; the canonical incident timeline updates in step.

• Structured Job Dispatch over Radio: A dispatcher pushes a structured ticket to a crew whose mobile data terminal is offline, and the job still arrives with address and incident reference rather than as a voice-only message.

• Position Polling for an Unresponsive Unit: A dispatcher polls a unit's GPS position via SDS when AVL has gone quiet, before escalating to a welfare check.

• Cross-Channel Acknowledgement Parity: A crew acknowledging a job over the radio shows up on the dispatcher's incident view exactly the same way as a crew acknowledging through the responder mobile MDT.

• Mutual-Aid Across Networks: Cross-network coordination through the Inter-System Interface when an incident touches more than one TETRA network operator.

Integration#

• Dispatcher Console (PSAP App): A dedicated TETRA status grid in the dispatcher workspace lets call-takers see radio status, push dispatch tickets, and trigger position polls without leaving the incident.

• Responder Mobile MDT: A radio status screen on the crew side mirrors what the radio terminal shows, so the crew has one mental model of their current status across both devices.

• Canonical Incident Timeline: Every TETRA status message and dispatch acknowledgement maps to a CloudEvent on the canonical incident timeline with a TETRA source domain marker, alongside MDT and PSAP-originated events.

• Feature-Flagged Production Adapter: The production gateway sits behind a feature flag and only activates once the commercial partner agreement is in place; the stub gateway carries development.

• Status-Code Lookup Migration: A SQL migration seeds the status-code lookup so the agency's existing radio status book is honoured rather than re-invented.

Open Standards#

• ETSI TS 100 392-2: TETRA voice and data air interface specification, the baseline for all Short Data Service and voice operations described here.

• ETSI TS 100 392-2-20: TETRA Short Data Service specification, covering structured status and dispatch messaging over the air interface.

• ETSI EN 300 392-7: TETRA security profile, governing authentication and air-interface encryption on the radio side.

• ETSI TS 100 392-3-7: TETRA Inter-System Interface for cross-network communication when an incident or mutual-aid response spans more than one TETRA network operator.

• 3GPP TS 23.379: Mission-Critical Push-To-Talk over broadband, the migration target once an agency moves voice and data off TETRA.

• CloudEvents 1.0: Open event envelope specification used to publish TETRA radio events onto the same event bus as every other operational channel.

• AsyncAPI 2.6: Machine-readable channel description for the TETRA event topics, giving downstream consumers a published contract for the radio domain.

• WGS 84 (EPSG:4326): Standard geodetic reference for GPS position polls and AVL fixes, shared across mapping and CAD systems.