Quick deployment of resilient communications system for Surf Life Saving NSW

With 12,000 beaches to patrol and 500 million annual beach visits to keep a watchful eye over, Surf Life Saving Australia is on a mission to reduce the coastal drowning rate.

Challenge

Maintaining a reliable, secure communications network is at the heart of Surf Life Saving’s service. The network needs to offer full coverage with no congestion and the infrastructure used must be able to stand up to weather events and other natural disasters.

For Surf Life Saving Australia, the challenge was to find a partner to provide the links for their digital voice communications along difficult coastal terrain in New South Wales. The solution must use licensed spectrum due to the mission objective of maintaining public safety and there was a desire for cost-effective, easy deployment of infrastructure.

Microwave and fiber solutions were quickly discounted due to the cost of installation – in particular the difficulty and expense of constructing large microwave towers along the coast.  Fiber and microwave would also offer far too much capacity for Surf Life Saving’s DMR requirements, making the expense of deployment untenable.

Solution

Karera Communications were chosen as the Systems Integrator to manage the project, due to their extensive experience in deploying mission-critical communications systems.

Based on the successful deployment of Mimomax equipment for Surf Life Saving New Zealand, the team at Surf Life Saving Australia requested a Mimomax Network Digital Link (NDL) for this NSW-based project. Karera Communications successfully managed the installation of a series of UHF network links, to provide coverage along 1500 kilometers of NSW coastline.

Designed for difficult links which would otherwise have required multi-hop microwave links, the Mimomax NDL offered the following:

• Robust and secure communications based on licensed spectrum;
• Better propagation characteristics due to UHF frequency band – with less impact from atmospheric conditions and path obstructions;
• Ability to install antennas on smaller, existing site infrastructure.

Results

• Achieving longer paths in a single link, the Mimomax NDL offered Surf Life Saving a solution which was both cost-effective and quick to deploy.
• The Mimomax solution offered compression techniques specifically designed for digital radio voice streams, far greater capacity in the available spectrum due to the use of MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) technology and very low latency to ensure real-time communications. The solution also allowed the use of lower modulation rates while still providing capacity-exceeding design requirements at a higher system gain compared to other narrowband linking solutions.

About Surf Life Saving NSW

Location: New South Wales, Australia

Industry: Public Safety

Services: With over 75,000 members spread across 129 clubs, surf lifesavers in NSW have patrolled over 1500 kilometers of coastline for over 100 years.