In today's technologically-oriented society, two-way communication devices have become ubiquitous. There are cellular telephones, smartphones, smartwatches, personal digital assistants, tablet computers, laptops, and two-way radios among others. These two-way communication devices are generally capable of both receiving and transmitting communications, and therefore may function as two-way communication devices. Often the receiving and transmitting functions are performed by transceivers that are either attached to or built into the two-way communication devices. Often, two-way communication devices are mobile and/or capable of wireless communication.
While the wide availability of mobile two-way communication devices has many advantages, in certain sensitive high-security environments two-way communication devices are a security risk. These sensitive high-security environments may be designated as non-transmission zones where both transmission and transmitters are prohibited.
For example, in the military, military personnel may be required to carry mobile two-way communication devices. But certain military locations are non-transmission zones. Generally, in these non-transmission zones it is not enough to simply prohibit military personnel from using their two-way communication devices for transmitting. Instead, military personnel are prohibited from bringing into the non-transmission zone a device that is capable of transmitting. Moreover, security personnel securing these non-transmission zones must be able to determine quickly whether a device is capable of transmitting or not. Therefore, in many military non-transmission zones military personnel may only bring pagers into the non-transmission zone.
Restricting military personnel to pagers in non-transmission zones does serve to reduce the risk of unauthorized transmissions, but this approach unnecessarily restricts these military personnel to just receiving paging messages while they are in a non-transmission zone. An approach is needed in which these military personnel could receive communications while at the same time being unable to transmit from the non-transmission zone. Previously existing devices however are inadequate for a variety of reasons.
For example, some devices are capable of being placed into an airplane mode in which they are not operable to receive or transmit. But for most devices, a user can put a device into and out of airplane mode. Therefore, these devices would still present a risk of being used for transmissions inside a non-transmission zone. In some cases, a third-party device can be used to place a two-way communication device in an airplane mode. See, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 9,031,582 (“Mohr”). If this is implemented merely in software, then there may also be a perception that software security solutions are more easily defeated as compared to hardware solutions. Moreover, this solution may also require a third-party device. If so, then issues may arise of compatibility between the third-party device and the two-way communication device. Therefore, logistical and security issues are still presented.
Another type of device allows a transceiver module of a device to be removable for replacement with another transceiver module, perhaps selected from a plurality of transceiver modules. See, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,705 (“Koenck”), U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2007/0155424 (“Gasper”). The purpose of this type of arrangement is usually for compatible operability of the device in different environments (where it might receive different types of signals), rather than security. Also, if this type of device were operated with the transceiver module removed, receiving and well as transmission would be disabled.
Thus, there is a need for a two-way communication device with a mechanism for disabling transmission while the two-way communication device is a non-transmission zone. One design consideration is whether the disabling of transmission also disables reception. Another design consideration is whether the disabling of transmission is at least partly done with hardware as contrasted with software.