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“At this stage, 40 000 users was the requirement. It can scale up even more as more users come on board, but it is a high-availability and fully redundant system which has been rolled out now nationwide for some time, in terms of the location-based services, and has proven to work very resiliently. “We designed it in a special way where we could manage traffic in peak periods – we could avoid congestion and make sure that things which are a problem with TETRA – like ensuring that you don’t flood the control channel – all of that risk is alleviated. So we do it very efficiently for TETRA as well as on other bearers as well, considering the security aspects of some of the other bearers, too. “There’s a certain amount of cunning there. And that’s one of the reasons why they chose us to do it.” Information: www.portalify.com Monitoring from your car"You see this yellow box?”, demands Michael Piciorgros, on the Piciorgros stand. “This is a TETRA test set. And telemetry. If you talk about telemetry, all the police, fire brigades – they get bored. But now, seeing this test set, many are interested – policemen, fire brigades, all people are interested. “When I started doing TETRA, if you wanted to know about your TETRA network coverage, you needed a big Rohde & Schwarz or something. Now, a customer asks me, ‘Michael, can I have one device recording all these parameters?’ And I said, well, we should make an equipment that you can put in a car very easily, that you can put on a train or put on a bus, and just let them go. This device automatically records every 50 metres or 100 metres or whatever you want. Once I have all the data, I can present it on Google Maps.” On the screen, Mr Piciorgros calls attention to a special feature of the drive-test traces, in their different colours: the user can select the data for individual base stations at will, in effect switching them on and off individually to highlight problem areas. “So he can do a little simulation on his PC in the evening”, he adds. “He gets all the data as an Excel data file and he can do what he wants with the data. “And the people are very and highly interested. The police are interested – they want to know about their network: they are not hiring a consultant and paying €25,000 but going out with their own equipment and doing it all by themselves.” Information: www.piciorgros.com Linking TETRA networks togetherAlso featured on the Piciorgos stand was the company’s DVI-100 Smart Inter System Interface, for interconnecting TETRA systems to allow cross-border working, or to enable different teams to communicate with each other at the scene of an major incident. It simply uses a pair of TETRA data radio modules. “You put one device on one network, the second device on the second network”, explains Michael Piciorgros. “From TETRA I take the digital – I don’t make it analogue, I put it on IP digital – and I transmit it to the second network, digital. So the voice quality is fantastic. There is no change, nothing. It’s the same – same-same. And this is also very interesting for police, fire brigades and for public safety people that basically are not interested in telemetry but in these special solutions. “I call it ISI, Inter-System Interface. And they say, ‘Well, Michael, this is not an ISI’, because their understanding of ISI is to connect Motorola directly into Cassidian. But the words inter-system interface, what does it mean? It means you have a TETRA network, you have a second TETRA network and you interface from one network to the other. We do it.” Besides providing a low-cost, easy-to-install link, the modules can also be used to provide emergency TETRA coverage quickly and simply. “Now, with a dumb infrastructure, my device enters a GSM link, telecommunications link or even satellite link – I offer all of them – and you log in to the main network. You go out, you erect the antenna and within five minutes we have coverage at this specific point.” Information: www.tetramodem.com Positioning in the cloudA new off-the-shelf package for track-and-trace, navigation dispatching tasks and messaging was demonstrated by the Belgian company Geo Solutions. Named Suivo, the product is designed for applications in the utilities, transport and so on. “For the TETRA network, we work closely with Astrid and we interface their server, getting the position with the radio, with our software solutions”, explained Raoul Penneman. “We have a cloud solution and we have an interface able to locate the radio but also to do reporting etc.”
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