Project Activities

Next-Gen MCPTT (Contest #002, Tech-to-protect Challenge)


December 1, 2020/

Participation in Tech-to-Protect Progress-Round Contest

We upgraded both the platform and the application to enable PTT service in both infrastructure-supported and infrastructure-less areas (with device-to-device communications). We have been selected as one of the top awardees in the progress round.


October 23, 2020/

Presentation in 5GWFRTN

We presented "Communications for Dynamic First Responder Teams in Emergency Response" in the 2020 IEEE 3rd 5G Workshop on First Responder and Tactical Networks.

Here is our presentation video:


July 28–30, 2020/

Presentation in PSCR 2020

We introduced Next-Gen MCPTT in the ReDiCom presentation in PSCR 2020


MAY 1, 2020/

Participation in Tech-to-Protect Online Contest

We enhanced our prototype (demonstrated in the in-person contest) with features like SMS, cloud-based speech-to-text & text-to-speech, dynamic group management, geo-location support, etc., and participated in the tech-to-protect online contest (national-wide). We received "superior" award (best in Contest 2) and seed round funding in the contest.


JANUARY 30–31, 2020/

Participation in Winter Institute 2020 (Exercise) at Disaster City

We demonstrated and tested our application with the first responders in the Winter Institute 2020 (Exercise) at Disaster City on the campus of Texas A&M University. The feedback is encouraging.
The first responders liked the features we have provided in the application, especially the message replay, automatic speech synchronization, text-to-speech & speech-to-text capabilities.
They also recommended us to add the features of map-support and device-to-device (D2D) comunications. We will focus on them in the future work.


NOVEMBER 1–3, 2019/

Participation in Tech-to-Protect In-Person Contest (NYC Site)

We participated in the tech-to-protect in-person contest in New York. We designed and implemented a prototype on top of MCOP which has the basic functionalities of store & replay messages and speech synchronization while keeping the backwards compatibility with original MCOP applications.
Our prototype was awarded overall #1 and best in class (contest 2).