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Omnitronics News June 2008
Welcome to the June edition of Omnitronics News. In this issue find out about how the Omnitronics IPR400's were installed by the Britomart Transport Centre Project team and the DX64 system installed for the Port of Melbourne Corporation. Make sure you check out our new regular features "What Is..." and "How Do I..." bringing you up to speed on all the latest technologies and features.
We hope you enjoy reading this edition of Omnitronics News.
Regards
John Florenca
CEO
DX64 used by Port of Melbourne in Maritime Operations 
Port of Melbourne Corporation is Australia's largest container and general cargo port, handling around 38% of the nation's container trade. Forty-two container shipping lines, as well as a number of other general cargo carriers, make around 3200 ship calls a year to Melbourne, providing services to ports in all major parts of the world.
The DX64 console systems were installed at the state of the art Shipping Management Centre & Point Lonsdale Signal Station, both sites are 24/7 operation and form an integral part of maritime operations within Port Philip bay.
ComGroup Australia's Victoria branch successfully delivered a turn key solution which involved working with Omnitronics to deliver a DX64 system with some additional unique functionality. Incorporated into the design is the serial control of the Codan NGT HF radio. This provides the DX64 with the capability to fully control and monitor operational functions of the radio with the added benefit of IP connectivity. The HF radios are able to be remotely positioned from the Operational Control Centre.
Careful project management was required to implement the system with the unique functions to be introduced along with meeting cutover requirements of no/minimal downtime on such a mission critical system.
Port of Melbourne are extremely pleased with the level of service provided by Comgroup, "It was a great achievement by the ComGroup Technical staff to install the new DX64 system whilst maintaining the lines of communications from ship to shore. The planning paid off when it came time for cutover, it was like clock work".
Omnitronics is greateful to all the staff at Comgroup for the successful installation of this project.
Britomart Transport Centre uses IPR400's to Interconnect Sites
The flexibility and ease of set-up of the Omnitronics IPR400 series of VoIP interfaces proved invaluable during the recent upgrade of a radio communications network in downtown Auckland, New Zealand.
The work carried out by Comwide Communications, a Brisbane based communications company, was a result of being involved with the supply and installation of the original system back in June 2003. The aim of the $350 million project at the Britomart Transport Centre was to create a modern rail station hub to bring rail passengers into the centre of Auckland. As part of this project an old Chief Post Office at the foot of Queen Street was also converted to provide a transport centre linking train, bus and ferry services.
The system required the provision of three VHF and three UHF tunnel repeaters and associated combining equipment for the new Queen Street Station. Communications within the underground station and tunnel was achieved by installing 700 meters of 7/8" leaky feeder coaxial cable.
Another site, at Quay Park, also contained two additional VHF and UHF radio transceivers to provide communications leading into the Queen Street Station.
Quay Park and Britomart Station were linked by fibre and connected via converters to Omnitronics 900DEN modules. A single 960CC operator console was used to control the system along with 950 interface modules and racks all located within the Britomart Transport Centre.
The Omnitronics IPR400's were installed to interconnect all sites in the transport centre. These devices were all preconfigured in Brisbane before being shipped to New Zealand. The IPR400's provide powerful routing functions with in-built interoperability between the UHF and VHF channels. The added benefit to the customer is that they offer flexibility of radio communications architecture. This will allow the customer to relocate the operations room to a central or regional location in the future, if required.
Omnitronics is grateful for the tremendous efforts by the team at Comwide Communications during this project.
Product Spotlight: IPR110 Plus Advanced VoIP & SIP Gateway
You may have heard about our new IPR110 Plus Advanced VoIP & SIP Gateway but what does this product actually do? Here's a run down of what it's all about...
Product Overview:
The Omnitronics IPR110 Plus is a powerful VoIP gateway for LMR users that goes beyond just providing remote radio access over IP. Using standard SIP based technology, this device allows connections to and from SIP phones and PBX's. In practical terms, this gateway enables users to connect to remote radio networks from their existing office based SIP compatible PBX systems and at the same time gives users of two-way radios the ability to dial SIP phones from the field.
Key Product Features:
> DTMF speed dialling - enabling mobile users to place calls to a number of preset telephone numbers
> Supports multiple SIP connections from phones, base stations, consoles and third party products
> In-built RS-232 channel (frequency) change capability - facilitates remote channel change from a dispatch console
> Voice Activity Detection (VAD) with silence suppression - to reduce data usage charges over 3G or satellite services
Advantages:
> Conveniently connect to and from SIP Phones and SIP PBX's
> Operates like a phone system where calls are initiated by either the SIP phone or the radio user
> Easy to install and begin using straight away with minimal training
> Fully compatible with the Omnitronics 960SIP Dispatch Console and the IPR Dispatch software
Suitable Applications:
Best suited for organisations requiring occasional access to a radio network from existing SIP phones; where telephone coverage needs to be extended into rugged or difficult locations that are best accessed via wireless communications. Typically these organisations include mining, oil & gas, transport or public safety.
A Typical Application:
How Do I...Connect a Radio to a PSTN/SIP Gateway?
The IPR110Plus is unique in its ability to allow radios to connect to a private SIP PBX or a public SIP service provider. But how do you actually connect all of this together?
To connect an IPR110Plus to a SIP service provider that has access to PSTN phone numbers, the service provider will provide the account details and settings you require. For an organisation with a SIP-enabled PBX you will need to contact the system administrator to ensure you have an allocated user name and extension.
Once configured, the IPR110Plus becomes an extension on the SIP server's database. Its SIP address is then associated with a phone number. The SIP server (or PBX) can then route incoming calls to the phone number allocated to the IPR110Plus.
The IPR110Plus can also be configured to make calls to the PSTN by pre-programming a number of SELCALL (or DTMF) strings. When the device detects a valid string from the radio network, it will initiate a connection to the associated phone number.
The diagram below outlines a typical connection set up:
Please email Omnitronics on main@omnitronics.com.au if you would like further information.
Multicasting is a technical term commonly used in the world of IP that means you can send a piece of data (a packet) to multiple sites at the same time. This size of the packet depends on the protocols involved. It may range from a few bytes to a few thousand. The typical way of moving information around the Internet is by using unicast protocols, tools that send packets to one site at a time.
You can think of multicasting as the IP version of targeted broadcasting. A site that multicasts information is similar in many ways to a television station that broadcasts its signal. The signal originates from one source, but it can reach everyone in the station's signal area. The signal takes up some of the finite available bandwidth, and anyone who has the right equipment can tune in. The information passes on by those who don't want to catch the signal or don't have the right equipment.
Why is this important? Because the alternative is to use IP broadcasts, and the problem is that broadcast packets increase processing overheads because every device on a LAN must process a broadcast packet, regardless of whether the packet is destined for the device or not. Broadcast packets also cause problems at the edges of networks.
The IPR family of products support multicasting. However, some networks, like the Internet, can't effectively support multicasting. This limits the ability to provide wide area simultaneous coverage. Omnitronics has developed a unique Radio Conferencing for the Internet technique which is essentially a pseudo multicast. Radio Conferencing overcomes this wide area simultaneous coverage issue without having to completely change existing radio or IP infrastructures. Radio Conferencing enables multiple radios to be linked together in a peer-to-peer arrangement over the Internet. Once in operation, audio received from any radio will be transmitted to every other radio. Of course, Radio Conferencing is also useful in non-Internet applications where it provides an alternative to multicasting for smaller installations.
The Omnitronics IPR100 uses this radio conferencing tool as shown in the diagram below:
