Most big businesses are taking on the new and improved Digital Radio systems that are taking the world by storm. But before P25 and DMR and before TETRA, we were kicking it old school with Analog radio for years. And I mean years! Between one of my employees and I, we have spent the better part of three decades keeping Analog systems working like a charm long after their design life. And in upgrading to Digital systems and even more modern Analog systems, we said goodbye to circuit board repair and said hello to double layer PCB’s and Potted Circuits. Now, we hot swap modules that are suspected faulty, and are sent back to the Supplier for repair or disposal; with the later of the two seemingly more popular.
The type of radio network you choose for you business will be dependent on a large variety of factors but for me I liken it to the battle between Edison’s Direct Current (DC) and Tesla’s Alternating Current (AC) in the 1880’s. Nearly a century and a half later we are still using them both as they both have their places depending on the nature of the requirement. And I mean lets get real here, even though we call it Digital radio, it still uses an analog audio signal which is than digitized and compressed. Personally, I find it hard to distinguish a particular person’s voice after it has been processed through digital modulation. And whilst a lot of people will tell you that Digital signals have more coverage, this is not what I have experienced! I find that Analog radio (although it demonstrates reduced audio quality over distance) travels further; whereas the Digital signal is either there or it isn’t! Some would say they would rather no audio than poor audio that can be misinterpreted but I’ll leave that decision with you.
Analog radio signals also have their place in security. Whilst the radio channels can be overheard locally by unwanted parties with monitoring equipment; with the exception of very modern Analog equipment, they typically aren’t connected to Worldwide networks that can be hacked or influenced and do not incorporate any data packets that can detail GPS co-ordinates and/or vehicular information. We used to get tricky with DTMF (Dual Tone Multiple Frequency) where we could use the tones to represent data however with IP systems now becoming more popular, DTMF for telemetry is taking a pretty big back seat.
But at the end of day, unfortunately Analog Radio is limited with the amount of people and groups that might be wanting to use the system and in most cases is a ‘jump in line’ type of approach. And Radio is a little bit like your local carpark during school pick up; what I mean is; often there is not many people wanting to use it, but suddenly (i.e. 9/11) the system needs more channels and more groups, and we need systematic radio comms which can integrate through different disciplines i.e. fire, police, and emergency services. Digital can give us that! However, I wouldn’t throw away the idea of also utilising a sneaky Analog radio on a trunked frequency 😉
Having worked on both systems vigorously I can say they both have their place, but I would say Digital is the more popular of the two.
Did you know we often do training for employees using these systems? And we are more than happy to install them for you too! Give us a call today.
