Vulnerability and coupling behaviour of a TETRA communication system to electromagnetic fields

Radio communication of civil emergency services, like police, fire service, etc. will be changed in Europe to the digital broadcast networks TETRA (“terrestrial trunked radio”) and TETRAPOL. Potential threats and IEMI effects of such radio networks against HPEM sources will be investigated and evaluated. The test setup contains a base station and two mobile handhelds. Transfer functions are documented. At higher exposition levels the base station temporarily showed failures. Higher levels of effects like degradation or mission kill can be achieved by using pulsed LPEM/HPEM sources. Further susceptibility investigations with HPEM sources are useful to determine the resilience of such a potential critical infrastructure (necessary for emergency services) against EM threats.