Mary Rose Roberts
Mary Rose Roberts is the associate editor of Urgent Communications, formerly Mobile Radio Technology magazine. She can be reached at maryrose.roberts@penton.com
Black & Veatch was selected by the state of Oregon to provide architectural and engineering services for the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network (OWIN) project that is designed to enhance public safety.
“The success of the OWIN project depends on the people with whom we contract and bringing Black & Veatch on board is an important step towards a successful project,” said OWIN Director Lindsay Ball. “We’re encouraged that Black & Veatch managers acknowledge the importance of putting Oregonians back to work.”
The OWIN project consolidates the Department of Oregon State Police, Department of Corrections, Department of Forestry and Department of Transportation radio systems into an up-to-date wireless public safety network. The system will replace outdated and aging infrastructure while complying with new Federal Communications Commission regulations requiring users of wideband radio to convert to narrowband technology before Jan. 1, 2013.
“This project will dramatically increase communications reliability and efficiencies for Oregon’s public safety officers,” said Martin Travers, President of Black & Veatch’s Telecommunications Division. “We have the capability to rapidly deploy engineering, site acquisition and construction experts to meet the challenging project timelines in an environmentally positive manner while accounting for future communications demand growth.”
The OWIN project will ultimately result in providing total communications coverage for public safety officials across the entire state. The network will consist of tower sites, communications buildings and power resources that are strategically located to provide reliable network operation. It is currently projected that the network will be operational by December 31, 2012.
“The initial site development will provide public safety communications network coverage to approximately 80 percent of the state’s total population,” said Paul Miller, Associate Vice President of Black & Veatch Telecommunications. “Black & Veatch’s design approach will optimize the cost, schedule and execution components of the project. OWIN benefits Oregon’s public safety officers as well as residents and visitors they protect and serve through efficient and coordinated communications.”
Based on the highly successful STP8000 hand-portable, the STP8100 provides a simplified user interface optimised for fire and rescue, transport, utility and prison service users who frequently just need to adjust volume, send Status Messages and change their Talk Group, but still demand the ruggedness and durability offered by the STP8000.
The STP8100 optionally includes Sepura’s revolutionary new Man Down sensor which triggers an alert when the radio detects ‘non typical’ user movement. Based on solid state ‘motion sensing’ technology, it detects motion in three dimensions alerting colleagues and the control room should the user become incapacitated. This is a crucial new safety feature for all workers operating alone or in hazardous environments.
Like the STP8000, the new STP8100 delivers 1.8W RF power, clear loud audio, a large colour screen that uniquely provides crystal clear visibility in all lighting conditions, combined with unparalleled water and dust resistance; all these features contribute to the delivery of outstanding performance.
Mark Barnby, Product Manager for Sepura, comments: “Sepura’s Man-Down has been extensively field-trialled by a number of fire services in Europe and a major airline. We have listened to the operatives in the transport and utility markets and added functionality to cater for the specific needs of these types of user.”
Mr Barnby continued: “By listening to the needs of our customers, we have once again demonstrated how we successfully tailor our products to meet their needs and the specific requirements of a variety of sectors. The STP8100 combined with its new Man-Down option is a class-leading radio that will undoubtedly suit many users”.
EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: EFJI) announced today that the State of Mississippi is purchasing $.85 million of the Company’s award-winning Project 25 compliant two-way radios and accessories, for use in the State’s strategic reserve in times of crisis.
“We are proud to be supplying our Project 25 compliant radios to the State of Mississippi to help their first responders be prepared in the event of natural disasters and other crises,” said Michael Jalbert, president and chief executive officer of EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. “Our radios have performed reliably in natural disasters and in severe environmental conditions. Our multimode radios that are interoperable with SMARTNET®/SmartZone® as well as Project 25 will enable Mississippi’s first responders to better accomplish their missions as their current systems migrate to the industry standard.” The Company worked closely with their dealer Ozborn Communications of Canton, Mississippi to secure the sale, Jalbert added.
Daniels Electronics Ltd., a leading supplier of high reliability digital P25 Land Mobile Radio infrastructure equipment, and Icom America, an industry leader of state-of-the-art digital communications equipment for land, marine, ham (amateur) and avionics use, today jointly announced they have renewed their distribution agreement of Daniels radios via the Icom Systems group. The renewed agreement will continue to facilitate Icom Systems Group ability to offer turnkey radio solutions for Public Safety agencies in the United States as well as in Latin America. With Daniels recent announcement of a P25 trunked radio system that Icom handhelds have been successfully tested on, Icom will also have a larger portfolio of products to offer Public Safety customers.
According to Robert Small, President and Chief Operating Officer for Daniels Electronics, “The continuation of our collaboration with Icom enables Daniels offer infrastructure solutions to the public safety and commercial market in North America for turnkey solutions that we are unable to address alone. The renewed agreement also facilitates expanded sales of our new P25 trunked radio system and enables us to pursue P25 opportunities in Latin America”
Daniels recently announced its new P25 trunked radio system at the IWCE tradeshow in Las Vegas. Building on its highly successful family of MT-4E digital radios, the Standalone trunked system provides a trunked solution for public safety applications that require a single site system that is compact, easy to transport, offers rapid installation and low current consumption. Fully compliant to the P25 suite of standards the Daniels trunked radio system is designed to interoperate with all P25 trunked handhelds and mobiles.
Chris Lougee’s view at Icom is “We have been pleased to work with Daniels over the years since Daniels is a well respected provider of analog/digital repeaters and base stations. Now with a renewed agreement that allows us to sell their P25 trunked radio system we can combine their infrastructure with Icom’s subscriber units and system integration to strengthen Icom’s presence in the expanding market for P25 digital integrated LMR solutions. Icom will be able to offer agencies a completely integrated P25 system solution, with full engineering, project management and field support to ensure performance. The agency will benefit from the “one source” opportunity to purchase a true “turn key” P25 communication systems with all components designed to work together and supported by one team. We feel Daniels Electronics has a similar vision to ours…high quality products, with high quality support designed to meet the requirements of this special customer.’
P25 (Project 25) is a public safety standard for digital wireless communications defined by the Association for Public Safety Communication Officials (www.apcointl.org). These standards enable users to communicate with other agencies and mutual aid response teams in emergencies, for the safety and security of communities across North America and the world.
Spectrum Signal Processing by Vecima (TSX:VCM) (”Spectrum”), an advanced communications equipment supplier, announced today a partnership with Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) to port the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Project 25 (P25) public safety waveform to Spectrum’s flexComm(TM) SDR-4000 software reconfigurable radio. P25 is the latest addition to Spectrum’s expanding waveform portfolio. This waveform is the most popular and widely used public safety waveform in North America. Supporting this waveform on a software reconfigurable radio allows military and other users to more easily communicate with public safety personnel to better co-ordinate joint emergency efforts. A demonstration of this implementation is provided at CANSEC 2009, in Ottawa, and features an industry standard P25 radio talking over-the-air to an SDR-4000.
“Spectrum continues to expand its waveform portfolio, offering its customers more options and applications available with its software reconfigurable technologies,” said Mark Briggs, VP Marketing at Spectrum. “We are pleased to continue working closely with CRC to provide our markets with software defined implementations of waveforms critical to both military and civil user communities.”
“CRC selected the SDR-4000 because it provided the comprehensive hardware, software, and environment required for the P25 port,” said Claude Belisle, VP Satellite Communications and Radio Propagation branch of CRC. “The SDR-4000 also supported the entire Software Communications Architecture (SCA) software operating stack that was critical in making this project successful.”
The SDR-4000 has been proven to support implementations of military waveforms, such as the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Wideband Networking Waveform Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (WNW OFDM), Soldier Radio Waveform Electronic Warfare (SRW EW), and Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS). Adding a public safety waveform such as P25 lays the foundation for interoperability between military and civil agencies.
Alvarion Ltd. (NASDAQ: ALVR), the world’s leading provider of WiMAX™ and wireless broadband solutions, today announced the addition of BreezeNET B300 to its portfolio of BreezeNET B family of point-to-point solutions. BreezeNET B300 provides far reaching coverage with high capacity point-to-point support for high bandwidth applications by using enhanced interference mitigation techniques, as well as adds new networking capabilities to reduce network overhead and improve quality of service.
BreezeNET B300 platform provides a secure, reliable robust solution covering the 4.9 GHz and 5 GHz bands in a single software configurable solution. BreezeNET B300 enables aggregated net throughput of up to 250 Mbps and is ideal for high bandwidth applications, and complements the current BreezeNET B family. The BreezeNET B300 provides an efficient and highly secure solution in both LOS (line-of-sight) and NLOS (non-line-of-sight) applications
“BreezeNET B300 is a perfect complement to our existing portfolio of industry leading wireless broadband solutions. Alvarion is delivering this solution to the market to support its partners and customers with the growing demand for broadband connectivity among all market segments,” said Avinoam Barak, president of Wireless Network Division of Alvarion. “The solution was designed to enable a rapid network build out with a lower upfront investment. As part of Alvarion’s strategy to strengthen its position in vertical markets, this product enhances our portfolio and allows Alvarion and its partners to provide an end-to-end wireless solution to the end users.”
The BreezeNET B product family for license-exempt wireless point-to-point bridging solutions, provides efficient and secure connectivity solutions for a variety of applications covering the 4.9 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands suited for enterprise and municipal wireless connectivity applications, leased line replacement, video surveillance, disaster recovery and backhaul services between remote locations.
Frisco, TX, May 12, 2009 – One of the first U.S. government-approved laboratories for the interoperability testing of P25 emergency radio communications systems will be available for industry use beginning this summer as the result of a joint effort by EADS Secure Networks North America and Tait Radio Communications.
The laboratory was named this week as a recognized P25 Compliance Assessment Program (P25 CAP) facility by a government approval process, which was established under a partnership of the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the P25 radio industry and the emergency response community. The Department of Homeland Security recommends that agencies – especially those receiving federal grants for interoperable communications – purchase equipment that has passed P25 CAP testing.
Located at Tait Radio Communications’ Houston, Texas facility, the joint laboratory will be available for compatibility testing with P25-standard equipment produced by the company and other industry suppliers.
“This new laboratory will become an important tool in helping first responder agencies throughout the country realize the vision of the P25 standards process,” said Steve Shanck, the Executive Vice President-General Manager of EADS Secure Networks North America. “Our joint interoperability testing endeavor with Tait Radio Communications is part of EADS Secure Networks North America’s commitment to facilitating the introduction of P25-standard equipment at the local, state and national levels.”
P25 public safety radio communications standards were established to ensure communications interoperability for first responders at the scene of an emergency or disaster situation. This effort – known as Project 25 – is supported by industry, government agencies and public safety communications officials – including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Communications System, the Department of Defense, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
The P25 CAP program helps assure P25-standard equipment purchasers that radios and networks from participating manufacturers will work seamlessly.
“Tait is pleased to be among the first to possess a lab which is recognized for the full suite of tests that are specified under the P25 Compliance Assessment Program,” said Tait North America President Steve Cragg. “Public safety and government agencies can collaborate effectively and taxpayers’ dollars are saved because freedom to choose is maintained in a multi-vendor environment.”
With the Tait laboratory’s government approval, the joint facility will be able to conduct interoperability testing required to issue Supplier’s Declarations of Compliance (SDoCs) for P25-standard equipment. The P25 CAP laboratory will undertake joint interoperability testing on Tait P25 equipment, network controllers from EADS Secure Networks North America, and also will test interoperability with mobiles and portables of a variety of manufacturers.
EXACOM proudly announces the introduction of the “Hindsight-G2TM” Next Generation Multi-Media Logging Recorders, which facilitates a “Unified Communications RecordingTM” solution to address the requirements for Public Safety, Homeland Security and Defense Applications.
The “Hindsight-G2TM” Next Generation series of Multi-Media Logging Recorders uniquely supports the concurrent recording of audio, video and data in a single recorder module.
The “Hindsight-G2TM” Next Generation utilizes a presence based architecture specifically designed to address the multi-media acquisition, storage and playback requirements of the new NG911 initiative for video, text messaging, VoIP, traditional E911 communications, and concurrent support for APCO-P25, RoIP, trunked and conventional radio communications recording in one system.
The “Hindsight-G2TM” features the unique “Time GateTM” user GUI which provides time synchronized multi-media, multi-channel monitoring and playback to support incident reconstruction, quality analysis and system reporting.
EXACOM, Inc., founded in 1986 by Helmut Koch, William Haskett and Edward Huggins is headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire with branch locations in the CA, SC, FL, CT, and in the UK. EXACOM is a leading manufacturer of communications recording systems for Public Safety, Homeland Security and Defense applications.
WASHINGTON, DC, May 5, 2009 - The release of a standard defining interfaces and APIs for a unified architecture among smart antenna vendors was announced by the Object Management Group (OMG™) and The SDR Forum today. The “PIM and PSM for Smart Antenna Specification” is the first joint standard released by the groups, both of which are non-profit member organizations that produce industry specifications -OMG in the computer industry and The SDR Forum in the reconfigurable radio industry.
“Because smart antennas combine both the computer and reconfigurable radio communities, it was an ideal subject matter for collaboration,” said Lee Pucker, CEO of The SDR Forum. “We expect this to be the first of many joint specifications carried out between The SDR Forum and OMG.”
“This specification is extremely important for software radio interoperability and portability, not just for initial adopters like the military, but also for broader commercial applications such as cellular telephony,” said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., chairman and CEO, OMG. “The successful completion of this specification adoption process shows how well OMG and the SDR Forum worked together to get high-quality, critical standards done quickly.”
A smart antenna is an antenna array system that is aided by a processing system that processes the signals received by the array or transmitted by the array using suitable array algorithms to improve wireless system performance. A software defined smart antenna is a smart antenna in which certain operating characteristics, such as the field of regard, frequency of operation, access mode, or transmit/receive waveforms can be altered by firmware or software download after its manufacture.
“The Smart Antenna specification standardizes the set-up, dataflow and control of multi-antenna platforms supporting beam forming, direction finding and multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) applications,” said Dr. Seungwon Choi of Hanyang University in Korea and Chair of the SDR Forum Smart Antenna Work Group. “This
new API will facilitate the formation of an ecosystem of vendors supporting a unified architecture for smart antenna technologies, providing telecommunications equipment manufacturers, radio vendors and network operators in multiple segments of the market with a cost effective tool for optimizing signal quality, capacity and coverage.”
The Smart Antenna specification is comprised of three major components:
The Unified Modeling Language™ (UML®) Profile for Smart Antenna (SA), which defines a language for modeling a smart antenna system by expanding the UML language,
The SA Platform Independent Model (PIM), which provides a set of interfaces for interfacing with the signal processing module, RF module, and controller module, and
The SA Platform Specific Model (PSM), which provides a rule for transforming the elements of the profile and SA PIM into the platform specific model for Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA®) interface definition language and XML.
The specification is available online at http://sdrforum.org/pages/documentLibrary/documents/SDRF-07-S-0016-V2_0_0_OMG_Smart_Antenna.pdf and http://www.omg.org/spec/smartant/.
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