Military

Both air band radios and ground radios can be remote controlled with SoftRadio. This means that the operator at the airfield can use the same PC and headset for all his communications.

The radios connected can be a mix of local radios and remote radios. An operator at one airfield can easily control radios also at many other airfields. Useful at low traffic hours to minimize staff at some airfilds.

Read more about air fields on this page.

Onboard the largest ships in the Swedish Coast Guard fleet there is a separate command and control room that is manned when taking care of an incident. It is separated from the ships bridge in order for them not to disturb one another.

In this command centre there is obviously a large need of communicating with the world around. Not just through one radio system but through many radio systems and phone systems that shall be used separately or in combination.

In two operator PC´s with touch screens, goose neck microphones, speakers and headsets the following systems are brought together by Mimer SoftRadio:

• 2 Tetra mobiles
• 3 Marine VHF Radios
• 1 Airband VHF Radio
• 1 UHF radio for on-board Communication
• 1 Analogue phone line connected to the ships onboard PABX

Most of the radios are placed in a radio room high up in the mast where they can have good coverage and a short aerial lead for low loss. Down from the mast to the command room there is only need for one common CAT5 cable, making the installation very easy.

All radios and the phone can be operated from both dispatch PC´s. Either through speaker/microphone or through a headset.

At this point all radios and dispatchers in the system are on-board the ship. However in a future this can be expanded through a suitable IP connection. Both land based radios and dispatchers can be connected as well as connecting several ships together. The system can also be expanded with audio recording.

Operators in Command and Control vehicles have a need to communicate in a lot of different systems, and will of course want to use the same control panel and headset for all communication.

In the command vehicles for the Stockholm Fire brigade there where first eight analogue radios, three mobile phones and intercom in each vehicle. This has now been updated to the public safety Tetra network used in Sweden and the number of radios are less than before.

All systems are operated in parallel from three touch screen panels and audio can be selected between headset or speaker and microphone.

Also other counties in Sweden use Mimer SoftRadio in their command vehicles for both radio and phones.

Apart from the dispatchers inside the vehicle, an expansion is possible with for example a tablet PC outside the vehicle through cable or Wi-Fi. This can be used by a dispatcher or commander with full function or just for listening in on the audio.

Through the use of for example a 4G/LTE link more external dispatchers can be connected to the radios in the vehicle and get the same possibilities as the dispatchers in the vehicle. On top of that they get an intercom channel between the inner and the outer command centre.

Users might suddenly find themselves involved in a large incident with lots of personnel, but in an area where the radio network does not have as much capacity as it does in the cities. Most public safety nets have a very good geographical coverage, but can of course not offer capacity for hundreds of users at the same time everywhere.

For example when helping out at a forrest fire, at a demonstration or when guarding a border.

A simple way to strengthen the radio net is to place a couple of fixed mobile radios in repeat mode at the incident site. Then more talk groups can be used at site. By connecting these fixed radios through Mimer SoftRadio to the Command Centre the dispatchers can follow all radio traffic and also use these extra recourses.

The radios and modems can be packaged in rugged cases for easy transport and rapid deployment at site.

To build permanent links between any two radio systems the X-Link interface can be used.
Read more here.

At some installations it is not allowed to use copper cables. All audio and all control needs to be done over fibre.

Since the remote control in a SoftRadio system is based on IP it is easy to add a fibre converter to the system and thereby skip the copper cables.

In a SoftRadio system operation is done from one or more PC dispatchers as usual. And the radios are connected to network interfaces. Many operators can operate many radios.

In a SoftLine setup the radios standard control panel and microphone are used instead of a PC. The big difference is that this becomes a one to one scenario with one radio and one operator.
Read more on SoftLine remote of the Motorola MTM5500 here. 

Many military radio systems today are shared with public safety and therefor use the Tetra standard. Some organisations also have their own Tetra systems.

SoftRadio have full remote control of donor radios from both Motorola and from Sepura. You can remote control the radios just as if you where sitting in front of them. This means that although the Tetra system is in one part of the country, you can have one or more radios there that you remote control from your PC sitting “anywhere”.

SoftRadio also has the possibility to connect directly into a Tetra infrastructure from Damm. With this solution, no donor radios are needed, all remote control functions needed are there.

In both cases SoftRadio can connect other types of radios and other equipment giving the operator the possibility to remote all his radios from one operator PC and maybe also cross connect the radios and record the audio.