Imagine thousands of people flock to your city for the big game. A suspect patient escapes from his hospital room during treatment. An active shooter opens gunfire in a shopping mall. Your first responders are prepared, but is your entire two-way radio system adequately maintained to handle communications during these scenarios 24/7/365?

Problem: Given a large number of subscriber radios on land mobile radio (LMR) systems, radio maintenance managers currently lack the appropriate equipment, manpower or time to ensure operational readiness for LMR communications. The current approach of servicing radios when they fail is considered reactive maintenance, not preventative maintenance (PM). With thousands of radios on the network, it is cost and time prohibitive to provide “proactive preventative maintenance”. There is a high risk that a radio would fail during an emergency when the first responder needs it the most.

Alternatives:

• Do nothing: With thousands of radios to maintain, a limited workforce, and a small budget, it is resource prohibitive to check every radio annually.
• Check only public safety radios annually: Statistics show that 85% of radios will stay within specifications while 15% will need to be brought into the technician’s shop for alignment checks or repairs. Taking public safety vehicles out of service incurs significant manpower and overtime costs.
• Cost per radio: Estimates are that the cost per radio is $120.
• Checking 2000 radios at $120 each equates to $240,000 for an annual preventative maintenance check.
• Larger cities or organizations with 10,000 radios at $120 would spend $1,200,000.

Recommended Solution:

LocusUSA’s DiagnostX system is the only over-the-air radio waveform analyzer in the market that evaluates all subscriber radios deployed in the field during normal operation without any user intervention or impact on the radio system.

• To ensure operational readiness, the radio communication links of the organization are continually monitored and maintained.
• By pre-identifying radio operational problems the organization will experience a higher level of system performance and reduced maintenance costs.

This proactive and efficient approach for radio maintenance offers cost and time savings over the current reactive approach. Examples of savings are:

• The majority of radios in a network, an estimated 85%, typically operate within specifications. Therefore, maintenance personnel are not spending time manually measuring the performance of every radio.
• This method eliminates NTF (no trouble found) radios. DiagnostX analyzes the radio in the field to verify it is the radio and not some other anomaly or user error.
• OTA monitoring reduces downtime of agency personnel. Scheduling and transport to and from the radio shop is costly.

Benefits:

Economic proactive preventative maintenance with DiagnostX ensures operational readiness and eliminates the possibility of radios failing during an emergency when they are needed the most.

Reduced maintenance man-hours are achieved as statistics prove 75-85% of radios in a LMR network typically operate within specifications. DiagnostX identifies 24/7/365 which radios can stay deployed and which radios need immediate attention.  Significantly reduced annual maintenance costs are achieved by only having to service 15-25% of all of the radios.

Summary:

LMR system managers with thousands of radios find it cost and time prohibitive to provide adequate PM alignment of all radios on an annual basis. Waiting for radios to fail before sending them for repair and replacement is reactive maintenance and endangers the safety of first responders, public safety personnel and citizens.

LocusUSA’s DiagnostX™ waveform analyzer identifies, verifies and analyzes the alignment and field performance of all portable and mobile radios in a network while they are operationally deployed in the field. Ensured operational readiness for LMR communications is achieved with preventative maintenance that can be easily managed. The system manager can schedule radio repairs proactively on a priority basis versus always reacting to radios after they fail. This proactive maintenance technology helps to keep radios on-call and ready 24/7/365.

To learn more about DiagnostX over-the-air waveform analyzer, visit our products page.  For other questions or to request a demo, contact sales@locususa.com.