Mobile short data services as a carrier for message communications

Mobile short data services are commonly available on most mobile communication devices, but are mostly used for plain text messaging. In this paper we investigate the use of different mobile services for use with unified messaging platform. The services analyzed are the ubiquitous GSM/UMTS branch cellular mobile network, TETRA professional mobile radio (PMR) network and Iridium low earth orbit (LEO) satellite phone network. Individually each of these have various strengths and weaknesses, so the task is to optimize the system to concentrate on the strengths of each network. Contribution of this paper is a robust control scheme for mobile modems, a simple model for integrating them to a messaging platform and performance evaluation of GSM, TETRA and Iridium message services. This work can be used in emergency management in an always best connected manner.