Indian Harbour Beach is spending $55,000 to upgrade a 20-year-old analog dispatch system to digital in anticipation of sweeping improvements being phased in to enhance and expand the Brevard County Public Safety Radio System.
The Brevard County Public Safety Radio System supports 67 county and local agencies and provides interoperability with the State of Florida Law Enforcement Radio System (SLERS) and Florida Region V (east Central Florida).
When the project began in 2013, the current Brevard County 800 MHz Public Safety Radio System was a 25-year-old, four-multisite EDACS trunked system utilizing Harris Corporation Technology. Enhanced Digital Access Communication System (EDACS) is a radio communications protocol and product family invented in the in the mid-1980s.
The enhancement project currently in progress involves reconfiguring the four multisite-system into a nine-site, three-cell GPS Simulcast design to improve countywide radio coverage with new cell towers in Scottsmoor, Cocoa Beach and Indian Harbour Beach. Simulcast is an abbreviation for simultaneous broadcast, and in the context of land mobile radio, it means simultaneous transmission from two or more repeater sites on the same radio frequency and with the same modulation. Simulcast has been around since the 1960s, but its popularity has increased recently – in part because modern technology has made simulcast more reliable.
Currently in Indian Harbour Beach, emergency communications with Melbourne Police or the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office require a multi-step process to get connected.
The enhanced system will provide Pro-Voice digital communication between user radios and consoles countywide. The county will operate old and new systems together during the transition to allow municipalities to budget for a gradual migration to the new standard, said Kimberly Prosser, director of Brevard County Emergency Management. “Municipalities are able to purchase and install new consoles and radios as budget is available, since we will maintain bandwidth to operate analog and digital systems simultaneously as needed,’’ she said.
The new system is not expected to block the use of emergency scanners except on specific channels dedicated for special functions such as SWAT, Prosser said.
Since 1994 the City of Indian Harbour Beach Police Department has been dispatching police and fire calls utilizing an analog dispatch console. “This is outdated technology. This new digital system will align our city with other agencies throughout Brevard County and help to provide the best communication for our public safety personnel and protection for our citizens, businesses, and visitors,’’ said Indian Harbour Beach City Manager Mark Ryan.
