A major airport in Southern Africa completes the first phase of its upgrade from analogue to DMR digital communications.

As part of its expansion, the airport’s main terminal building has been renewed and further land earmarked to meet the forecasted growth in passenger numbers from 1.9 million today to over 4 million by 2022.

But the sustained growth of passenger numbers has served to highlight the limitations of the analogue radio system that was in use and the need to replace it with a digital solution to add more users and user groups while enhancing safety, security and operational efficiency.

The airport’s management team worked with external consultants to explore the radio communications technology best suited to their current and future needs. DMR two- slot, 12.5kHz TDMA technology was selected and the requirements detailed in a tender document.

Global Communications, a subsidiary of Hudaco Industries is awarded the new DMR digital radio system project.

Following a competitive formal tender process and presentations, Global Communications were awarded the project which due to the need for additional UHF frequencies would be delivered in two distinct phases:

Phase 1: Voice only using the two existing frequencies.

Phase 2: Voice, Short Data Messages (SDM) and GPS to be implemented when two additional frequencies are granted.

Once the system design and programming specifications were finalised and the acceptance test signed-off, it took under 5 months for Phase 1 to be completed.

The challenges faced in delivering this phase was that it had to be implemented ‘live’ in parallel with the existing analogue system and with minimum disruption to the airport’s operations.

This resulted in the Global Communications team having to work around the limited access to vehicles to install mobile units, the logistics of scheduling numerous training sessions with users from multiple departments around their duties and ensuring that everything and everyone would be ready for the switchover to digital at the same time. Other issues, resulting from the limitations of only having two frequencies available were addressed by reprogramming equipment.