DMR, Thought Leadership

DMR or TETRA: A Technical Comparison of Coverage

March 25, 2014

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

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DMR, Thought Leadership

Broadband and Smart Grid Communications — One Ring to Rule Them All?

March 13, 2014

A commonly-accepted view about Smart Grid is that it requires a single, high-capacity network to support two-way communications with smart devices and applications. But can a single technology provide this? Tait Principal Consultant, Dr. Jan Noordhof, argues that the answer is ‘No’.

Let’s consider the jam that utilities around the world find themselves in. Demand for electricity is increasing faster than they can supply it. At the same time there is political and consumer pressure to cut the cost of power.

However, a great deal of... Continue Reading

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DMR, P25, Thought Leadership

Connection: Connecting radio users and experts

February 20, 2014

by Lorraine Bonisch, Editor, Connection Magazine

We have just released the latest edition of Connection – Issue 4.

In four issues of Connection, we’ve now brought you 60 articles from our technical experts, thought leaders and people in the field. For example, have a look at Dave Slaten’s feature on Vehicle Area Networks, Richard Winter’s practical advice on ways to increase your network resilience and how to manage the human aspects of a technology rollout. Readership continues to increase as we reach out to everyone involved in mission-critical comms. Continue Reading

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Products and Solutions update

Lean Manufacturing

September 12, 2013

By Dean Mischewski, Production Engineering Manager, Tait Communications.

For many manufacturing businesses the Lean journey is often driven by the need to rapidly avert financial or business pressures which are coming to bear.

Taking a longer term and proactive approach, Tait Communications embarked on a Lean Manufacturing programme in late 2006 to ensure that the high-mix, medium volume manufacturing environment could continue to deliver competitively-priced communications solutions, systems and products to our global customer base.

For a Lean Manufacturing programme to be... Continue Reading

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DMR, P25, Thought Leadership

Why the console is your most critical choice

September 5, 2013

By Marvin DuBois, Director of Product Marketing, Avtec, Inc.

Solving the challenges of digital radio.

Much has changed in the last three years for those choosing the right ingredients for their Command Centers. The environment now includes new mobile radio technology choices, growing regulatory requirements, the need to consolidate dispatching locations and wide-area disaster recovery solutions. All of this contributes to a growing need for system design flexibility supporting multiple radio types, input/output, telephony and specialized computer-aided... Continue Reading

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Thought Leadership

Electrical Utility Reliability Trends [Infographic]

August 27, 2013

Electric utility reliability performance has hit the news recently due to weather and other natural disaster events. We thought it useful to compare the performance of different regions around the world, although we note these graphs exclude outages caused by major events. Europe has consistently improved across most nations, and Australia has had very variable performance. The USA has not seen much change over the 10-year period to 2010. Continue Reading

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Thought Leadership

Beyond Bluetooth™

August 22, 2013

By Trish Messiter, CEO, Clarinox Technologies & Anthony Lister, Senior Systems Designer, Tait Communications.

Long-term value from short-range connectivity; wire-free and hands-free possibilities for critical communications.

In this age of smartphones, touch-screen tablets and imminently wearable computing, the ubiquitous radio communications device seems to be just as resilient to change as it is to the rigours of the environments in which it’s used.

Emergency response personnel are literally weighed down by technology these days as they double-up and triple-up on gadgets to get the... Continue Reading

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DMR, P25, Thought Leadership

Will I need new TDMA Accessories?

August 13, 2013

By Sander Colenbrander, Senior R&D Technician, Tait Communications.

Six things you should know about radio accessories for your new network.

When you are upgrading your network to P25 Phase 2 or to DMR, the TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) signals can cause significant interference on your audio accessories. Probably your existing accessories were designed for FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) radios, which did not encounter this issue, so will not operate properly on a new network. Network operators need to understand the issues and budget for accessory upgrades. Continue Reading

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DMR, P25, Thought Leadership

Brains beat brawn in radio linking

August 8, 2013

By Paul Daigneault, Chief Executive Officer, MiMOMax.

A common misconception among radio professionals is that a large bandwidth is needed when linking analog and digital PMR base-station sites. However, this isn’t necessarily the case.

With the development and adoption of more spectrally-efficient radio technologies, it can be argued that there’s no overall shortage of radio spectrum. However, the unique propagation properties particularly associated with radio waves in UHF bands make this the most sought-after and crowded band in the usable spectrum. As a... Continue Reading

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Thought Leadership

Under the Hood — Specifying voice quality for your digital network

August 1, 2013

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

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