10-year Development of DMR Radios

26 Oct. 2016   News

It’s been over 10 years since Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) was developed by the European Technology Standards Institute as the standard for professional mobile radio (PMR) users. As the standard has matured, deployments have shown how DMR solutions have many advantages over other digital public or land mobile radio technologies targeted at the business critical and commercial sectors.
As with all new technology, migration can present logistical challenges for system owners as they strive for minimal operational downtime during the migration period. But over the years DMR has continually proven itself in the field, especially in critical environments such as utilities, mining and transportation industries.
Organisations who previously may have been reluctant to transfer their trust from reliable legacy analogue systems are increasing turning to DMR to meet the growing need to improve the efficiency of their radio communications systems.

Reasons to Migrate
There are a number of compelling reasons to adopt DMR technology as analogue systems come to their natural end of life.
1. Capacity
Probably the most significant advantage of DMR enjoyed by both operators and regulators is the ability to re-use existing 12.5 kHz spectrum to carry two usable TDMA timeslots, effectively delivering double the frequency efficiency of the analogue system being replaced.
For operators, this can mean a combination of reduced licence costs and increased communications bandwidth and for regulators it will ease the perennial problem of spectrum congestion without presenting the additional headache that other digital technologies bring with frequency re-mapping.
2. Digital Audio Quality
For the end user, one of the key benefits of DMR digital radio technology is the improvement in audio quality over analogue. An analogue signal will gradually weaken and become harder to use as the distance from the site is increased. The user will experience increased amounts of ‘hiss and crackle’ until finally the received audio is completely lost in the noise. DMR Digital technology provides better noise rejection and preserves voice quality over a greater range than analogue, especially at the farthest edges of the transmission range based on the combined efforts of narrowband codec and digital error-correction technology.
3. Easy migration and backwards spectrum compatibility
DMR offers an easy migration path from analogue to digital radio systems because of its analogue/digital dual-mode feature, The DMR standard covers all the most used analogue solutions such as single site, multisite, simulcast and trunking. A customer can start to implement DMR digital radio infrastructure over an existing analogue network, reusing sites, antennas, power supplies, branching, connection links and frequency licenses.
4. Longer battery life and greater power efficiency
One of the biggest challenges with portable devices has always been battery life and DMR has the advantage of greater power efficiency due to its two-slot TDMA. Since a call uses only one of the two time slots, it requires only half of the transmitter’s capacity as the transmitter is idle half of the time.
5. Data Applications
DMR enables data applications such as text messaging, GPS, SCADA, and telemetry, in addition to transmitting voice. Simoco Pulse range uses the technology to deliver a mission critical telemetry solution, capable of transmitting low band data where other options prove unreliable. As the DMR standard also supports the transmission of IP data over the air, this allows for the easy development of standard applications which help deliver return on investment for users switching to digital as the ability to add business enhancing data services and applications to radio systems is a key priority.
6. Distributed Architecture
Simoco DMR solutions include cloud-based distributed architecture, meaning systems do not have to rely on centralised hardware that would add to cost and reduce resilience. HQT also developed DMR solutions also allow for greater scalability where required.
DMR is the best established digital technology in the market today and is the clear choice for organisations looking to deploy new digital two-way radio systems, or to upgrade their existing analogue radio to digital.

(Source: simocogroup.com)