PULLMAN, WA – Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories announces the launch of a solution designed to enhance land mobile radio (LMR) and 911 communications. This solution provides reliable, secure and manageable communications for emergency responders, public safety agencies and critical utilities.
SEL developed its LMR solution in collaboration with Whitman County Emergency Management (WCEM). WCEM is located in Pullman, Washington, next door to the SEL campus. The collaboration began when SEL learned about the challenges WCEM had with its radio system reliability. The ability to use LMR to call for help is a vital safety concern for emergency responders, and until now the unreliability of legacy devices has challenged the sector.
“At the end of the day, we needed three fundamental things for our infrastructure,” said then-WCEM Emergency Communications Manager Steve Krigbaum. “We needed reliable network security. We needed to know the health and condition of the radios out there in the world, and we needed precise timing. And SEL was able to provide that.”
The LMR solution addresses each need using the following networking, monitoring, control and timing devices:
- A software-defined networking switch to improve cybersecurity by allowing engineers to define what can and cannot occur on a network.
- A multiplexing platform to provide voice transport services and wide-area networking.
- A Real-Time Automation Controller (RTAC) to allow radio engineers to remotely oversee and operate the LMR system.
- A satellite clock to precisely synchronize simulcasts and preserve radio call clarity.
Whitman County is located in Eastern Washington, where temperature extremes in winter and summer frequently cause the legacy clocks WCEM relied on to fail. The first test of the solution came when SEL installed a prototype in Pullman in the summer of 2024. LMR systems can include multiple clocks for redundancy, automatically switching between clocks that provide the highest accuracy. When given a choice between the SEL LMR solution and the legacy hardware, the WCEM system chose the SEL solution.
“It’s been a vast improvement in audio quality,” Krigbaum said. “And I think that speaks volumes when a prototype can outperform what had been your gold standard.”
To learn more about the project, visit selinc.com/wcem.