Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, is undertaking a massive upgrade to its police department’s mobile radio system.
The university partnered with Mission Critical Partners (MCP) on the upgrade project, which just completed its first phase. Before the upgrade, Carnegie Mellon was using a conventional analog land mobile radio (LMR) system operating on the ultra-high frequency (UHF) band to communicate with field personnel in patrol cars, on bikes and motorcycles, and on foot.
However, system users were experiencing performance issues at the edge of the system’s coverage footprint and in campus structures such as classroom buildings and dormitories. The university was also running into operability issues with nearby police departments that had already upgraded their own radio system.
Last summer, MCP subject-matter experts (SME) conducted an overall assessment of the university’s system and performed coverage testing. The SMEs also assessed the consoles used in the department’s 911 center and the distributed antenna systems (DAS) and bidirectional amplifiers (BDA) that are in place in numerous campus structures to improve in-building coverage. After the assessments, the SMEs made numerous recommendations based on the findings and then provided guidance pertaining to multiple improvements that the department is pursuing.
As a result of MCP’s findings, the police department is replacing its legacy LMR system with a P25-compliant digital simulcast system with encryption. Moving to a P25 system ensures native interoperability with the city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County emergency-response agencies. Another benefit is that the new system will provide stronger and clearer voice communications to the edge of the coverage footprint while extending it.
The project’s next phase is expected to address the issues that exist with the university’s in-building coverage infrastructure.
