On the Cassidian stand, visitors saw demonstrations of temporary TETRA radio coverage for applications such as disaster relief, based on the company’s growing range of transportable infrastructure. A portable TETRA switch, the DXT3p, was unveiled at the show.

The demonstration system included a TB3p transportable TETRA base station linked by an E1 cable to a satellite modem and Ku-band uplink dish, from which the connection was relayed via a geostationary satellite to a DXT3 TETRA switch at Cassidian’s engineering base in Ulm, Germany. To complete the loop, an ISDN circuit from Ulm was connected to another TETRA base station placed on the other side of the stand, enabling exhibition visitors to try the satcom-linked end-to-end connection for themselves.

“The customer can, via these two units, obtain a feeling of how TETRA works”, explained Markus Weber, of sister company EADS Astrium. “There are slight delays, so the customer can get the feeling of what the delay is. It’s roughly half a second.

“There was a large amount of talk of how far one can live with that delay, and this system will work without delay. We did some tests beforehand with our colleagues from Cassidian and we could then demonstrate that it’s OK and it’s acceptable. That’s why we decided to demonstrate it here as well.”