Protecting Trunked Radio Systems with Remote Monitoring

Your two-way radio communications are an essential function for the success of your organization. Without the ability to communicate with your team, you'll limit the amount of work you get done. What happens to your team's productivity when your radio communications go down? When lives depend on your radio communications, you can't sacrifice reliability.

Many organizations fail to take a proactive approach to ensuring they have reliable communications. When their radios go down, they're forced to scramble to get their radios back up. This time spent waiting and repairing is simply a waste. With the right monitoring system in place, you'll have the edge when responding to problems with your radios.

Proactive Reliability

By deploying monitoring gear to monitor your radio communications, you can guarantee yourself a greater level of reliability. By monitoring forward and reflected power, you can ensure that your trunked radio system is operating optimally. If the power is too high or low, you'll be notified. This means you can address problems quickly before they're able to cause serious problems with your communications.

Two-way radio communication reliability is critical - especially in emergency response organizations.

Your radio communications will be more reliable, meaning you and your team can communicate more effectively without prolonged outages hampering your team. The instant there's a problem transmitting or receiving, you can quickly troubleshoot and get your radios back online. You'll enjoy gains in productivity and greater satisfaction from your customers/end-users.

If you're a municipal or emergency response organization, having more reliable communications means you're better equipped to respond to emergencies. Without having to deal with a problem interfering with your radio communications, you can provide a more reliable service. In this industry, that can directly translate to saving more lives and helping more people.

This additional reliability could also help your organization achieve a better iso rating. A better rating from the ISO could lead to reduced premiums and lower insurance rates - meaning your organization will have more budget money left over for more important projects.

Trunked Radio System Monitoring

You can monitor your radio communications using remote telemetry units (RTUs). An RTU is a compact 1 RU box that features inputs for various alarm types. With a good RTU, you'll have discrete and analog inputs to use for your radio system monitoring. Here are the 3 essential features you must have in your RTU:

1. Plenty of alarm inputs - You'll want to make sure your RTU has plenty of discrete and analog inputs to support all of your equipment. With enough alarm points, a single RTU will be able to monitor your power amplifiers, repeaters, power supplies, and frequency combiners. Your analog inputs will be able to monitor critical environmental conditions (like temperature and humidity) to protect against damage caused by overheating or humidity.
2. Flexible alerts - A good RTU will alert you the instant there's a problem with your trunked radio system. Depending on the RTU you choose, you'll be able to receive alerts via email, SMS text messages, voice dial-outs to your phone, pages, and SNMP traps to a central master station. Don't settle for less than multiple alert methods - otherwise you won't have the true flexibility to respond to emergency situations.
3. The power to remotely control your gear - With a quality RTUs, you'll also get the ability to remotely access your equipment via control relays. A relay either latches or releases a contact closure, giving you the power to control any device that is normally operated by a button or a switch. Having several control relays means that you'll now have the ability to remotely control your gear - from the same box that monitors your gear. How's that for maximizing ROI?

Finding the Right Remote Telemetry Unit (RTU)

Monitoring the forward and reflected power of your radios is a serious task. You can't afford to leave your radio communications unmonitored, but you also can't risk choosing the wrong system. Many monitoring solutions leave out some of the essential features mentioned above that you can't live without.

With the right monitoring system you'll enjoy more reliable radio communications. Just think, the instant there's a problem with your radios, you'll know. On top of having more reliable communications, you'll probably end up saving yourself some money through a better ISO rating. How many more projects could you get done if you only had some extra money?

The NetGuardian 16A features 16 analog inputs for maximum analog coverage. This device is capable of monitoring the forward and reflected power of your radio communications.

Since you're a professional, you only want the best solutions that can deliver results. I recommend you spend a few minutes to take a look at the NetGuardian 16A. This powerful, 1 RU device features 16 analog inputs to monitor your equipment. You'll also get 20 discrete inputs, 4 control relays (so you can have remote control over your power supplies, amplifiers, repeaters, etc.), and an easy-to-use web interface (so monitoring your equipment is easy).

All DPS solutions come standard with a 30 day risk-free guarantee - if you don't like it, just return it. You'll also enjoy first-class tech support - so you're never alone when monitoring your network.

If you want to learn more about how you can monitor your trunked radio system, then call (1-800-693-0351) or email (sales@dpstele.com) the monitoring experts at DPS. You can get your questions answered and work with an engineer to design the perfect-fit solution to monitor your radio communications. You can't leave your radios vulnerable any longer - call today.

You may also use the form below to submit a fast information request to Mac Smith.