Case Studies - 2 Way Radio

The Lake Station Police department serves a geographic area of over 10 square miles. Much of the City is covered by a thick layer of trees, making complete coverage of the City via portable radios a challenge. Recent availability of funding to improve communications systems for Indiana cities allowed expansion of this system.

It was decided to add a receiver at the West side to expand the system ability to receive. A DSP based receiver comparator was installed from JPS Communications. This comparator compares the receive audio from both the main and auxiliary remote receiver and automatically makes a decision on which receiver has the least amount of static accompanying the signal. For the case of this repeater talk-back was the only problem. Repeater talk-out to the portable radios was quite ample as the repeater transmitter power output is much higher than the portables talking back into the repeater.

Site coverage analysis

Thru the utilization of propagation modeling software, we were able to pre-test many tall structures on the West side for a possible location of the receiver. A nearby community owned 140ft tower fit the bill perfectly. A complete model of the system coverage was provided to the Police Chief for approval. This model allowed a definitive plan for review by non-radio savvy City administrators, making the overall approval process much quicker.