Background
The Abu Dhabi Police are tasked with ensuring the safety of Abu Dhabi, part of the UAE, and its citizens. The police have more than 30,000 police officers spread across the region. One of its jobs is to maintain order and ensure public safety at the country’s 4,000 mosques. The Abu Dhabi Police communications network consists of TETRA professional mobile radio system, a cellular broadband LTE network and other sub-systems.
The Challenge
Each of the 4,000 mosques needs a public address system to broadcast the call to prayer, play music and to make public announcements. They also need to be hooked up to the National Crisis and Emergency Management Authority (NCEMA) national warning system in the event of an emergency.
In turn, the Abu Dhabi Police need each mosque to be connected to their TETRA two-way radio network and their broadband LTE network. The system needs to be able to transmit a push-to-talk (PTT) general warning from a single point if an incident or emergency situation occurs.
The TETRA radio system also needs to be in place in each mosque to enable the Abu Dhabi Police to communicate in the event of an emergency such as a terrorist attack on a mosque. The radio system also enables the police to swiftly coordinate an effective response to any incident.
The Solution
The solution needed to be integrated into the existing TETRA network supplied by Airbus. The proposed solution involved deploying the Hytera DTT806 terminal. The DTT806 is a network hardware unit that connects up remote terminal units (RTUs), a broadcasting system (PA) and the TETRA radio system.
Hytera has considerable experience in adapting its products to meet the specific needs of particular customers. In fact, it has a separate department dedicated to redeveloping its products to meet individual requirements. In this case, Hytera adapted its DTT806 product to meet the needs of the Abu Dhabi Police.
The DTT806 collects the data, such as pre-recorded voice broadcasts, to transmit to the TETRA system and receives instructions from the gateway for processing. The DTT806 supports multiple interfaces and multi-standard protocols, including customized protocols. The DTT806 is easy to install and maintain, while its flexible network topology means it is very adaptable. It particularly suits decentralized, complex geographical environments, making it an ideal solution for industrial applications such as power, oil, gas and petrochemicals, among other sectors.
The Results
Hytera's solution met the full requirements of the bid document using tried and tested products, which have all been successfully deployed in other regions. Rather than having to install a separate system, the Hytera DTT806 solution enables Abu Dhabi Police to make further use of their existing TETRA network. This meant the Police were able to extract more value from their communication network, while minimizing their investment costs.
The mosques now play frequent pre-recorded voice messages every day. The Hytera Public Warning system can store a huge number of individual pre-recorded voice files in the DTT806 terminal. The voice files could be transferred over air interface. The PA system on the DTT806 then plays the voice file message by remote command.
Now each mosque can instantly open a communication channel on the TETRA network by pushing the emergency button on the Hytera DTT806 terminal. This allows the officer at the scene to immediately alert colleagues and the command and control center if a dangerous situation is developing.
Voice from Customer
“The Hytera DTT806 solution saves us a huge amount of time and effort in the administration and maintenance of all our mosques. The remote control facility and status report updates on every single mosque boosts our efficiency and means our officers do not have to go out on patrol every day.”
——Major Jasem, Director of the ADPs’ Telecommunication department