Coverage considerations will dictate the number and locations of your radio sites (also referred to as towers). Together with frequency availability and traffic patterns, they will determine whether the system should be simulcast, multicast or a hybrid of the two.

Coverage engineering may be the most complex area of the radio system specification and design process and is one critical area where your investment in a competent consultant will be well justified.

Measuring coverage
There are many ways to describe coverage performance. It is typically... Continue Reading

John Graham, Solutions Marketing Manager at Tait looks past the hype to investigate these two technologies and compare their coverage performance.

Every year, many communications systems reach the end of their economic life due to obsolescence, regulatory requirements or because they cannot deliver the business benefits of digital radio.

Early in your upgrade process, you need to decide which technology will give you the best coverage without the expense of additional radio sites. Large organizations such as utilities normally purchase trunked radio... Continue Reading

If you have never been involved in renovating your own house, you almost certainly know someone who has. It is a major logistical exercise in planning, perseverance, and above all, patience! Mostly, you will end up with what you want, but how often do you think “I wish I had shifted that wall/put in more storage/added another bathroom”?

There are so many things to decide, and only one chance to get it all right. And for most people, you will be carrying on your domestic “business as usual” amongst the chaos of upgrading your home.

Upgrading your radio system is a bit like... Continue Reading

By Evan Forester, Marketing Campaigns Coordinator, Tait Communications.

Last week we introduced the new P25 Best Practice guides and website. Today we’ll dive a bit deeper to take a look at the first guide: First Steps to your P25 System.

I recently drove to a friend’s house and attempted a short cut. Unfortunately, I started by making the wrong turn. I ended up in a place I was unfamiliar with, but kept guessing the general direction of my destination. After a while, I literally found myself on the complete opposite side of town.

So much for finding a short cut.

If your... Continue Reading

Click to visit the website and download the P25 guides

We are happy to announce the launch of our P25 Best Practice website complete with the first four P25 Best Practice guides:

  1. First steps to your P25 system
  2. Specifying your P25 system
  3. Procuring your P25 system
  4. Implementing your P25 system Continue Reading

Public safety agencies across North America choose Tait’s P25 Simulcast solutions – here’s why:

  • 40% increase in cross-county coverage + digital encryption to foil drug gangs’ scanners
  • Narrowband compliant and digital ready + 50% cross-county coverage increase
  • Multi-agency secure solution with 90%+ coverage and 100% redudnancy
  • Dead spots deleted and communities safer in a shared solution for the City and State Continue Reading

Simulcast (simultaneous broadcasting) means multiple base stations transmitting the same voice (or data) signal on the same frequency at the same time. This means that every frequency pair – probably your existing channels – can each provide greatly extended coverage across a very wide area. The secret to Simulcast is high-stability transmitters and signal timing, structured and implemented by coverage experts to negate potential interference.

To understand how Simulcast works, let’s look at some simple simulcast networks: Continue Reading

Tait MPT 1327 system meets utility’s needs.

Photos courtesy: Rappahannock Electric Cooperative

Faced with frequency squeeze, a federal agency deadline and communications kit from the 80s, Rappahannock Electric Cooperative (REC) formed a co-operative with four other Virginia state rural utilities to find an end-to-end solution for their narrow banding issues.

The answer: a Tait 220 MHz MPT 1327 radio system with IP backhaul.

REC now serves about 157,000 members with more than 16,000 miles of line in more than 22 counties and, in the aftermath of winter snow storm ‘Saturn’, managed over 40,000 radio calls during six days.

Read more to find out how. Continue Reading

By Scott Quintavalle, Vice-President Systems Engineering , Tait Communications.

When Public Safety radio networks were analog, life was a lot simpler. There was little variation in the way audio was delivered, and measuring signal strength was a reasonable indication of audio quality for radio users, so long as there was not too much environmental noise or interference.

While digital radio undoubtedly delivers a host of benefits, it does cause a few headaches for technical and operations people who need to define and maintain a level of... Continue Reading

Coverage reliability is possibly the single most critical requirement for Public Safety communications. It is also one of the most complex. To provide effective coverage for modern networks takes a deep understanding of coverage theory, a toolbox of principles and approaches and the practical experience of successful implementations. Stakes are high, and coverage cannot be left to chance.

“Coverage reliability” is an engineer’s way of stating the probability that Public Safety officers can communicate clearly, at any time and any place within their coverage... Continue Reading