LS Elektronik AB

Large Airports are a perfect environment for SoftRadio.

Busy, busy, busy! All around an airport you have people and vehicles that need to communicate. With SoftRadio your operators can communicate with all types of radio systems including the air band radio to the planes. There are virtually no limits to what you connect into the SoftRadio system. Ground radio, Airband radio, Intercom, Phones etc.

SAS – Scandinavian Airline Systems

The largest installation of Mimer SoftRadio is used by SAS. They have connected all Scandinavian airports to a dispatch center in Frösundavik, Stockholm. The main connection is their own WAN system, but they also use public Internet for remote locations.

At each airport there is a ground radio system, at many airports old analogue channels in VHF or UHF and in the larger airports it is Tetra. At most airports there is also one or more airband radios. This means that the dispatchers can talk both to ground personnel and to approaching airplanes through the same user interface.

All audio in the system is also recorded through Mimer VoiceLog servers.
For backup reasons there is also an extra standby dispatch central at Arlanda Airport, that can be operational at short notice.
In total the system has about 50 operators and 60 radios spread out over Scandinavia.

Pilot add-on with PoC functionality

To make the turn around faster at the airport gates, SAS connects the pilots into the ground radio call that is ongoing around the airplane at the gate. However the pilots doesn´t use a standard two way radio for this, it would be to complicated since every airport has its own radio system. The pilots instead uses their smart phones and an application that connects them to the two way radio call. This is done with Mimer equipment and in cooperation with a company called GroupTalk. You can read more here.

A small airport or airfield is often unmanned, but a landing airplane still need to talk to Air Traffic Control elsewhere.

By using remote controlled radios, one operator can handle many airfields from one single location.

Working Remotely

Remote controlled Airfield radio

Remote dispatcher

Small airports and airfields are in many cases unmanned. If they are far away from a large airport with Air Traffic Control, they need to have their own radio to handle safe landings and take aways.

This locally installed radio can be remote controlled from a totally different place. All you need is an IP connection.

Night time watch from one common dispatch site.

Common dispatcher – Night watch

In the example to the left, the three airports each have their local small system with one radio and one dispatch PC. The three systems are also remote controlled from one common dispatch site.
This set up can be very useful for example when there is low traffic at night time, but you still need to monitor what is happening at the remote airport. One common dispatcher can then handle all three airports.
The system can be expanded with more airports, dispatchers and also other types of radios.

 

 

Radio Types

Virtual Control head of the Icom IC-A120, remote controlled airband radio

Fixed radios

The most common radio that we remote control, is the Icom IC-A120. It is remote controlled with audio and PTT plus channel change and squelch setting.

We can also remote Jotron radios with the same functions, and many other radio types, with only audio and PTT (fixed channel).

 

Portable airband radio connected to a network interface

Portable radios

Most portable radios can also be remote controlled. But only for audio and PTT, no channel change.

The drawbacks with using a portable are power through the battery (it needs to stand in a charger) and a small antenna.