DMR has a role in business-critical digital radio
While TETRA is the mature standard for mission-critical networks....
Business radio provides a valuable but often unseen function in society. Its wide variety of users (emergency services, utilities and transport organisations, building sites and hotels) usually pay for the radio terminals, infrastructure and licence (there are some business radio service providers) to maximise the benefit for their businesses. Where public safety might be at stake, such as on trains, business radio is mission critical, but for many users it can simply make their business more efficient whilst also protecting the workforce from a health and safety point of view.
Companies opt for business radio so that:
- they have control of the network
- there are no variable monthly call charges
- they have the coverage and facilities where and when they need them.
A bus transport company cannot rely on busy commercial networks to protect its drivers in the event of an accident or attack. Similarly, a utility company has to have coverage everywhere that its staff need to work, possibly beyond the boundaries of commercial networks.
Many of these users would like to migrate to digital radio because
the communications path is generally clearer, codecs can be optimised to
work in high noise environments, and there are better facilities, in
particular IP packet data and additional features such as duplex voice.
However, the choice of digital radio has been limited to date, unless a
proprietary solution was adopted. The availability of equipment using
the ETSI standard DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) is therefore welcome.
DMR is intended to be a digital replacement for conventional analogue PMR radios, as well as shared repeater systems and MPT 1327 trunked radio systems.
Source: www.analysysmason.com
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