Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Meeting a Tight Deadline: Utility Merges Radio Systems Through VoIP Conversion

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 16:57:12 -0400

Meeting a Tight Deadline: Utility Merges Radio Systems Through VoIP
Conversion

By Don Bishop

Mergers are common in every industry. They can be a big driver behind
the growth in a company’s customer numbers. In no other industry is this
more true than in utilities. Growth through acquisition not only builds
the customer roles but it leads these utilities to streamline processes
and reduce costs by combining field operations. Many times this leads to
a consolidation of disparate radio systems in the field.

National Grid, a utility with headquarters in Massachusetts, is a good
example.  It has grown to operate five electrical distribution companies
serving more than 6 million customers across the Northeast and
delivering natural gas to customers in central and eastern New York.

Last year, National Grid decided to join together operations from field
offices in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire into its
headquarters. Before these operations could be moved, facilities at
headquarters and a second control center had to be upgraded to handle
all of the private wireless dispatching that previously had been shared
with the field offices.

Meeting a Tight Deadline:

Utility Merges Radio Systems

Through VoIP Conversion

Wireless Systems Cutover Has a Short Fuse

A short internal deadline had to
be met so the private wireless dispatching
would be ready on the operations
department’s schedule. That
meant completing the project within
six weeks of selecting a contractor on
Aug. 29, 2003.

Integrated Dispatch Solutions
(IDS), Wyckoff, New Jersey, won the
bid with an innovative plan to make
extensive use of voice-over-Internet
protocol (VoIP) equipment in central
electronics racks in a way that cut fabrication
and installation time to a
minimum.

Chris Love, president and cofounder
of IDS, said that he recognized
the huge challenge in building,
shipping, installing and optimizing
two separate, 20-position consoles
located 75 miles apart and networked
with one another.

“We typically would require a
minimum of 120 days to complete a
project of this size,” Love said. “We
promised National Grid a ‘go live’
date of October 14, 2003, and even
though we did not have the official
purchase authorization in hand until
September 9, we still somehow managed
to meet their deadline and our
commitment to them.”

Francis Flynn, National Grid’s
manager of distribution dispatch
projects, explained that although
VoIP wasn’t an initial requirement,
the IDS plan suited the utility’s need
to reconfigure its analog conventional
two-way radio networks with the flexibility
necessary to use the utility’s
existing extensive microwave backbone
system.

“We were looking for a new radio
solution to go with an expansion of
our control center and the functions
we handle in giving orders to distribution
workers,” Flynn said. “We had
to increase the number of radio frequencies
and channels at the control
center, which required a radio system
upgrade.”

Private Wireless System Critical to Employee Safety

For safety, National Grid uses its
own private wireless network instead
of cellular phones. Flynn said that not
all linemen have cellular phones and,
even if they did, it would be a logistics
problem to know the phone numbers
and which linemen were in which
trucks. Also, cellular phones cannot
monitor communications among
multiple workers.

“We have certain radiosassociated
with truck numbers. That way not
only can we communicate, but field
workers can hear what’s going on as
they do their daily work. Radio communication
is very important to a
lineman because when that worker is
on a distribution feeder to isolate
equipment, switching orders have to
be communicated to make it safe to
do the work — or to deal with fire or
rescue workers at a car-pole accident,
for example, so they can carry out
their tasks safely,” Flynn said.
During a typical day, dispatchers
direct the activities of linemen. In
turn, linemen work within two operational
sections: high-power transmission
involving electricity flowing
between different utilities, and field
operations on the distribution network
involving maintenance and
shutting down or activating transformers
affected by traffic accidents,
tree branches or weather.

Cost-effective

Methods of Equipment

Redundancy

Each of the two control centers,
with 20 dispatch positions apiece, is
capable of handling all the dispatching
to meet a vital redundancy
requirement, according to Tim
Walters, vice president and cofounder
of IDS.

Love added: “With VoIP technology,
IDS was able to provide
National Grid a substantial cost savings
when compared to a more traditional
dispatch center approach.
Designing each system to mirror the
other for redundancy, rather than
making each location redundant unto
itself, cut hardware costs almost in
half while providing a far greater level
of safety. Even if National Grid were
to lose an entire site, the other dispatch
center would be capable of running
their entire operation. That’s a
level of redundancy that very few private
companies or even public safety
agencies, are accustomed to.”

The ‘Incredible Potential’ of VoIP:

How it Works

Dan Howard, director of systems technology at IDS, first proposed and
engineered the system design that was used for National Grid. Howard
said that he has recognized an “incredible potential” for VoIP
technology for a number of years.
“I was really looking forward to finding just the right opportunity to
implement and prove the operational feasibility of this technology,”
Howard said. “Although the complexity of the National Grid requirement
was fairly extensive, the technology and system performance ultimately
performed as advertised.”

The dispatch centers control about 60 remote base stations in as many
locations that serve 2,500 to 3,000 conventional mobiles and portables
on all land mobile bands from VHF low-band to 800 MHz, plus one 800 MHz
trunked system. Telex-Vega C-Soft software lets IDS configure dispatcher
screens to display various geographic sectors with available radio
channels or a multi-state view of the radio channels available. During a
storm or a disaster, dispatchers look at bigger operating profiles in
bringing together multiple districts to dispatch.

Dispatchers can selectively interconnect radios regardless of frequency
band.

To achieve the flexibility required to control such diverse radio
equipment, IDS designed a central electronics rack of VoIP controllers
for each dispatch center. IDS used 30 Telex-Vega IP-223 VoIP controllers
at each location.  Each center has to control 60 radio channels
distributed among the base stations. National Grid has about 80 radio
channels in New England represented by simplex channels, repeater
channels and trunked talk groups. Each IP-223 can control two radio
channels, so the design has expansion capacity.

Doug Ehlers, engineering manager at Telex-Vega, Lincoln, Nebraska, said
that his company was suited for the project requirements because of its
ability to meet the timeline, to make engineering changes to fit the
selected dispatch software and to incorporate Kenwood Fleet-Sync air
status protocol into the IP-223 software.

“We made our bid presentation in mid-August. We knew we would have six
weeks from the issuance of the purchase order to turn on the system.
Because of the architecture on an IP network backbone, installation is a
simple matter of plug-and-play. There are no infrastructure issues
because IP makes them go away,” Ehlers said.

“Between that and the fact that we had a lot of the equipment available
on short notice, we could build on short order and supply IDS the
necessary IP-223s as they built up their racks,” Ehlers said.

System Meets Special Requirements

National Grid wanted phone patch capabilities and other special
capabilities for the dispatch software already selected for its
computers, and Ehlers said that Telex-Vega allocated engineering
services to add those features to the IP-223.

Additionally, National Grid required the Fleet-Sync air status protocol
for the Kenwood units in use on its private wireless network. Ehlers
said that IDS initially thought of using a third-party vendor to
engineer that capability.  “We stepped up to the plate and said we could
put the capability into the IP-223 product software, eliminate two or
three cabinets’ worth of equipment from the third-party vendor, and
implement it at a cost savings to National Grid.” Placing the Fleet-Sync
capability into software made the data available on the radio network so
any C-Soft console could display it. The third-party solution would have
limited the data display to consoles that were co-located with the
Fleet-Sync decoder.

Ehlers said his company looks to maintain a close relationship with
“star vendors” such as IDS. He said key vendors maintain a direct line
to the Telex-Vega engineering department to accommodate requests with a
quick turnaround.
Telex-Vega Provides Area for Final

Staging of System

National Grid couldn’t allocate space on their site for assembly of the
system, and so Telex-Vega provided space to IDS to receive and assemble
cabinets, network gear, power supplies and other equipment for the
project.  “We staged it into a room, and when the equipment arrived, Dan
Howard and Chris Love came here from IDS for three weeks to build up all
the equipment to meet the shipment deadline. It shipped to National Grid
a week before the turn-on date,” Ehlers said.
IDS used Telex-Vega’s machine shop to solve some mechanical problems
that made the equipment fit “nice and cleanly,” Ehlers said. “When it
went out of here it was pristine. IDS did a spectacular job with the
look of the equipment.”
Mission Accomplished

IDS shipped the equipment via FedEx ‘critical’ Saturday morning, and had
employees in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in place to meet the trucks
on Monday.  They offloaded the equipment into the dispatch centers and
had the system operational on schedule – October 14.

“The IP-223 is assigned an IP address to work on the computer network,
controlled through Ethernet switches,” Walters said. “A dispatcher can
now click on a radio channel icon on a computer display, and the
software finds the IP address. The command goes through National Grid’s
Ethernet to that address and the IP-223, which is then connected
directly to the transmit and receive of the base station.”

Radio system control now shares the National

Grid corporate network’s fiber optic facilities as a completely separate
data network dubbed “RAN,” for “radio area network.” The RAN allows
control of the company’s 60 radio channels from the two dispatch
locations.

System Upgrade Brings Controllers

Closer to Base Stations

National Grid has a patchwork of acquired private wireless and backbone
communications systems, so the “direct connection” might involve four or
five bridges to connect a base station to the IP-223. The route may
cover 150 miles through multiple locations over microwave and other
media.

Since the initial cutover, National Grid has contracted IDS to make
changes that reduce the number of failure points by moving the IP-223
controllers closer to the base stations. This arrangement also sets the
stage for National Grid to take advantage of other key features of VoIP
technology over conventional console architecture as additional
requirements surface.

For example, initially the RAN Ethernet connections were to be available
only at the two dispatch locations. IP-223 controllers will now be moved
to five additional locations, four of which are key regional operating
centers. As console projects arise at these locations, it will be simple
and relatively inexpensive to add C-Soft consoles, all of which would
have access to all 60 radio channels if necessary for disaster recovery.

“National Grid has become more comfortable with VoIP and its ability to
control radios from any location with an Ethernet connection,” Walters
said. “We are in the process of migrating some of the VoIP boxes to the
remote base station locations where National Grid has RAN capabilities.
This change eliminates some of the microwave and telephone line paths.”
Walters said that migrating controllers into the field gives the utility
a higher level of redundancy and eliminates some possible points of
failure. National Grid considers the fiber-optic connectivity between
these locations to be more reliable than phone circuits.

Conclusion

What first began as a response by the National Grid requirement to merge
field control of certain operations into the headquarters facility has
led to the utility’s more rapid adoption of VoIP technology, providing
it with interoperability, improved redundancy and the elimination of
potential failure points.
It was a challenging project for all of the professionals
involved. IDS and Telex-Vega had to work closely on issues
such as software programming and equipment staging to
ensure the delivery of the radio system. Plus, the extremely
tight deadline often required around-the-clock workdays
for Integrated Dispatch Solutions’ design, integration and
implementation team. “We were extremely motivated by
our commitment to meet that deadline. It became a challenge
that we as a team accepted and worked towards completing
successfully,” Love said. _

Author BIO ––
Don Bishop is a free-lance writer who previously served as editor of
Mobile Radio Technology. He can be reached at 913.221.3007.

Integrated Dispatch Solutions (IDS), based in Wyckoff, New Jersey, is a
vendor-neutral radio systems integrator with a focus on large, custom
critical integration projects.  For more information, call 201.848.7027
or visit www.dispatchsales.  com.

http://www.ita-relay.com/magazine/PW2004/May2004/UtilityFeature.pdf

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