More than 80 police officers from 23 forces attended a demonstration of Motorola?s new TETRA (TErrestrial TRunked RAdio) Airwave compliant terminals.
More than 80 police officers from 23 forces attended a demonstration of Motorola?s new TETRA (TErrestrial TRunked RAdio) Airwave compliant terminals at Motorola?s European headquarters in Basingstoke. The new ?Transmit Inhibit? feature, TX-I, will allow officers to disable all transmissions from TETRA radios, meaning it can be used in RF-sensitive areas, but will still be able to receive messages from the control room and selected talk groups ? so that the officer is never out of touch, the manufacturers report. However, if officers find themselves in a mission-critical situation they still can use their emergency button to gain priority access to their controller. The manufacturer admits there has been some concern over the potential of Airwave-compliant radios to interfere with sensitive electrical devices such as equipment in hospitals, breathalysers and speed radar guns. Although the levels of interference to third party devices are minor, says Motorola, it brought into question the core Airwave technology and could potentially be used in a defence?s case to avoid prosecution of offenders.
On old analogue radio systems, radios only transmitted when a user requested communication. However, Airwave compliant radios automatically search and register on the communications network to ensure the user is always in coverage and is guaranteed a free channel. With the TX-I feature users can still benefit from such coverage, without potentially interfering with RF-sensitive equipment, the makers say. Having studied the operational issues of implementing TX-I it became apparent that a log of when the radio was in TX-I would become increasingly important, Motorola say. Thus the firm has implemented an ETSI enhanced version of TX-I. The radio is switched to ?enhanced mode? to automatically send a status message, to inform the dispatcher when this mode is switched on or off. This means that forces can provide evidence of the use of TX-I, in the case of speed gun and intoxicator meter results being contested. Force databases can now monitor when TX-I is turned on or off and link this to incidents. Officers at the demonstration also saw mobile data demonstrations and picture transmissions that will be possible over the Airwave (digital radio) network, reproted Gary Maughan, Business Director, Public Safety Terminals at Motorola.
