Goals
The deployment of the new national public safety network « Réseau National Intégré de Radiocommunication » (RENITA) aims to
- Replace all analogue radio network in service since the 70s
- Dispose of modern, state-of-the-art, reliable and secure digital radio network
- Support the work of all organisations of the Luxembourgish public safety sector
- Allow cross-organisation communications
- Facilitate cross-border communications with public safety organisations of the neighbour countries
The network
The 'Réseau National Intégré de Radiocommunication' (RENITA) radio network is a digital network for the exclusive usage by the Luxembourgish public safety organisations.
The State of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has ordered the planning, the deployment and the operation of a national public safety network in 2014. The network was launched in 2015 allowing the Police forces to benefit from a modern network during the Luxembourgish presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The RENITA network is a cellular network and its structure is comparable the structures of public mobile networks. This allows all users located in and around the national territory to communicate together with their handheld, mobile and fixed terminals. RENITA completely covers the national territory as well as all tunnels and important buildings. During special events or crises situations, the coverage of the network can be extended in a flexible manner by deploying mobile base-stations in the concerned areas.
RENITA is based on the standardized TETRA (TErrestrial Trunked RAdio) technology where available capacity is efficiently shared between users. This allows all users to dispose of necessary capacity to support their day-to-day work and to manage emergency situations.
TETRA is optimized for voice communications; however, the technology also allows the transfer of low-bandwidth date such as geographic positions or short data messages.
The RENITA network is designed to serve over 10.000 users and supports group communication as well as traditional half- and full-duplex individual calls. Though the majority of users use the terrestrial network, air-ground-air communication with flying objects such as helicopters is supported as well.
As RENITA is the main supporting technology for public safety interventions, special attention is given to keep the overall availability of the network well over 99.99%. At the same time, RENITA guarantees the confidentiality of the transmitted communication by using encryption on all layers.
The RENITA network uses frequencies that have been harmonized all over Europe for public safety communications.
Since 2018, a dedicated department reporting to the Minister for Communications and Media is in charge of the administrative management of the network.
The operation of the RENITA network is assured by a private consortium composed of companies that have extensive experience in the domains of telecommunications, digital networks and radio communications. The Operator monitors the network 24/7 and is in charge if the network maintenance.
The users
The RENITA Network has been dedicated for the usage by all public safety organisations belonging to the State of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg:
- the National Police (Police Grand-Ducale)
- the Rescue Services and Firefighter brigades (Corps Grand-Ducal d’Incendie et de Secours – CGDIS)
- the Customs administration (Administration des Douanes et Accises)
- the Intelligence Services (Service de Renseignement)
- the High-Commissioner for National Protection (Haut-Commissariat à la Protection Nationale)
- the Public Roads administration (Administration des Ponts et Chaussées)
- the Army (Armée luxembourgeoise)
- the governmental communications centre (Centre de Communication du Gouvernement)
- the Prison administration (Administration pénitentiaire)
- the River Security (Service de la Navigation)
- the Refugee Holding Center (Centre de rétention)