Integrating Two-Way Radio into
Your Unified Communications
Environment
Fixing the Gaping Hole Two-Way Radio
Poses for Many UC Deployments
Brent Kelly
Wainhouse Research
November 2008
Wainhouse Research, LLC
34 Duck Hill Terrace
Duxbury, MA 02332 USA
+1.781.934.6165
www.wainhouse.com
Study sponsored by:
Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
Contents
Executive Summary......................................................................................................... 2 Two-Way Radio Voice: A Gaping Hole in UC Deployments ........................................... 2 Integrating Two-Way Radio with Unified Communications Systems .............................. 3 Converting Analog Two-Way Radio to IP .................................................................... 3 Unifying Two-Way Radio with Unified Communications.............................................. 4 Integrating WAVE with Unified Communications Solutions ............................................ 4 WAVE as an Interoperability Solution .......................................................................... 4 Integrating WAVE with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 ...................... 5 WAVE Integration with IBM Lotus Sametime .............................................................. 6 Integrating WAVE with IP Telephony........................................................................... 7 WAVE Solution Architecture ............................................................................................ 7 WAVE Media Server ................................................................................................ 7 WAVE Management Server ..................................................................................... 8 WAVE Communicators and Customization ................................................................. 9 WAVE Dispatch Communicator ............................................................................... 9 WAVE Desktop Communicator .............................................................................. 10 WAVE Mobile Communicator................................................................................. 11 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 12 About the Author............................................................................................................ 13 About Wainhouse Research ...................................................................................... 13 About Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc. ............................................................................. 13 © 2008 Wainhouse Research, LLC
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
Executive Summary
Unified communications (UC) provides a framework for streamlining the flow of
knowledge and information throughout an organization. Combining the many disparate
communications mediums available to the typical enterprise worker into a presenceenabled, easy to use communications and collaborative solution can simplify
communications and increase individual productivity. Most UC deployments, however,
have ignored two-way radio group voice communications by focusing on individuals and
by limiting group voice to audio/video conferencing.
Two-way radio group
communications is extensively used for mission critical communication such as command
and control, emergency response, dispatch, field service, and security. Military units,
police, transportation companies, airlines, and many others depend on their radios for
day-to-day operations. This whitepaper discusses why the voice capability two-way radio
provides is a key component that must be considered within an organization’s overall
®
unified communications fabric, and we describe a product for doing so, WAVE from
Twisted Pair Solutions.
Two-Way Radio Voice: A Gaping Hole in UC Deployments
Many of today’s UC solutions focus on integrating telephony and conferencing with a
buddy list and directory services to enable telephony presence, click-to-call/click-toconference, and fixed/mobile voice convergence (FMC). Voice is clearly one of the most
important elements in any unified communications deployment as Microsoft and IBM both
found this out when they realized that companies would not deploy Office
Communications Server or Lotus Sametime until these UC solutions provided tight
integration with voice systems. Similarly, in the many organizations that rely on two-way
radio communications for critical operating functions, integrating voice from radio devices
is a gaping hole in their overall unified communications planning and deployment
strategy. Just as IBM and Microsoft learned that voice is required for a serious unified
communications solution, organizations considering unified communications should not
ignore the crucial voice capabilities two-way radio provides as they do their strategic UC
planning.
In 2007, the worldwide two-way radio market was estimated to be $8.2 billion. In North
1
America alone, this market is estimated to be $7 billion by 2010 .The two-way radio
market has many names including Land Mobile Radio (LMR), Private Mobile Radio
(PMR), tactical communications, and Push to Talk (PTT). For simplicity, we refer to it as
two-way radio throughout this document. Mobile radios provide a critical communications
capability for many industries, governmental organizations, and the military. In these
organizations, two-way radio is the only way to communicate effectively and
economically.
Most individuals that use two-way radio also regularly communicate with desk-bound and
mobile colleagues in the same organization, and they frequently interact with people in
other organizations. Integrating two-way radio voice communications within an
organization’s Microsoft Office Communications Server or IBM Lotus Sametime desktop
environment and/or with IP phones will be an important element of its unified
communications rollout. However, integrating two-way radio with these popular UC
environments has proven difficult due the myriad devices, channels, frequencies, PBXs,
and cell phones people use. Until now.
1
RELM Wireless. http://sec.edgar-online.com/2008/03/05/0001116502-08-000360/Section31.asp
© 2008 Wainhouse Research, LLC
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
In this white paper, we examine the benefits integrating two-way radio into a UC
environment brings. We discuss how two-way radio voice is converted to IP and reveal
some of the challenges involved with integrating two-way radio into a UC environment.
We then focus on Twisted Pair’s WAVE solution, which is an all-software, open
standards, IP-based technology that lets customers build and operate secure and
scalable communications systems using off-the-shelf hardware in the world’s most
demanding environments. We illustrate how WAVE integrates two-way radio voice with
common unified communications platforms like Microsoft Office Communications Server
and IBM Lotus Sametime, as well as with IP telephony platforms from Nortel and others.
We conclude with a summary of the WAVE architecture and a description of how a
WAVE solution works.
Integrating Two-Way Radio with Unified Communications
Systems
A two-way radio system is a collection of portable units and stationary base stations that
communicate with each other over predefined radio frequencies or channels. These
systems are usually deployed by organizations that need instant communication between
geographically dispersed, mobile employees. Two-way radio is a primary
communications technology deployed by the military; by first responders including police,
fire and emergency medical services; on oil and gas production rigs; in construction,
transportation, and in warehousing applications; for site security; by forest service and
oceanographic personnel; and in a host of other applications.
Two-way radio systems typically consist of dispatch consoles and portable units. These
systems may be simple deployments containing only a few radios, or they may be
complex installations, consisting of thousands of portable units and hundreds of dispatch
consoles, operating over very large geographies.
Converting Analog Two-Way Radio to IP
Two-way radio base stations typically have input and output ports that allow them to send
and receive voice communication via a voice gateway. These voice gateways allow twoway radio systems to integrate with telephony systems and with IP communications
systems. The capability to convert voice transmissions over radio waves to IP packets
(known as Radio over IP or RoIP) is what creates the powerful connection between the
previously isolated world of two-way radio and the collaborative power of unified
communications. Radio over IP provides numerous benefits that not only extend the
reach of two-way radio, but makes its inclusion in UC a necessity for organizations
looking to maximize organizational connectivity and communication.
Radio over IP can be managed and accessed through an enterprise-wide unified
communications solution, and it provides the following benefits:
• Incompatible two-way radio systems and frequencies can easily communicate
with each other because the voice is encoded using a standard compression
algorithm (G.711, G.729 or G.723 codecs, for example) and transported between
gateways over the IP network.
• Radio users can readily communicate with others who may be using standard
telephones (TDM, IP, or mobile phones).
• Radio users can communicate with people who may be out of radio range, but
who do have access to a PC or telephone.
• In geographically dispersed environments where radio is used in field locations,
and where these locations are connected via an IP network, two-way radio users
© 2008 Wainhouse Research, LLC
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
•
in different remote areas can speak with one another even though they may be
separated over hundreds and thousands of miles.
Many different organizations or departments can be joined together continuously
or ad-hoc, with the flexibility to choose whether to monitor and/or communicate
with one another at any time and in real-time. This flexibility to connect “on
demand” is important in urgent enterprise operations and in life threatening
situations.
Unifying Two-Way Radio with Unified Communications
Several approaches exist that enable disparate two-way radio communications solutions
to communicate with one another and with mobile or landline phones.
The first method consists of using purpose-built, proprietary hardware and software. The
hardware in one of these solutions is typically a patch console that interfaces to several
different types of two-way radio solutions. The software lets an operator patch the
different radio channels and phone lines together using a graphical user interface. While
useful, such solutions do have limitations, including:
• They typically rely on proprietary hardware using specialized CPUs and real-time
operating systems.
• They are often purpose-built with little end user or integrator customization
capability.
• These systems typically have little integration capability with a larger unified
communications solution.
• They often require the same manufacturer’s radio hardware throughout the entire
solution, making it difficult to include legacy equipment or radios from other
providers.
A second, more flexible solution is a software-based approach that uses the power of
software and RoIP to interface with any IP-based unified communications solution. The
software runs on off-the-shelf computers using standard operating systems. This type of
solution deploys standard gateways to encode the two-way radio voice signal to IP
packets. Once digitized, the software is able to mix, route, and patch any two-way radio
voice channel with any other voice device, including IP or TDM phones, mobile phones,
softphones, UC clients, and other two-way radio radios solutions connected to the
system. One software product for integrating two-way radio with unified communications
®
is WAVE from Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc.
Integrating WAVE with Unified Communications Solutions
Radio over IP and UC technology are driving the cost of integrating two-way radio with
unified communications down to almost nothing. In the past, a new user on the two-way
radio system needed about $4,000 to buy a new radio and about $60,000 to buy a
dispatch console. With newer software-based solutions, new users only need a PC,
PDA, IP phone or Smartphone to join in on two-way radio group communications. Older
systems were closed, which inhibited collaboration. Today, with software-based open
solutions, any organization can afford group communications.
WAVE as an Interoperability Solution
Before two-way radio can be integrated as part of a UC solution, interoperability between
disparate systems is a prerequisite. WAVE is a software-only solution that enables
interoperability by creating a system of two-way radio systems. A system of two-way
radio systems means that any radio manufacturer’s solution can be integrated into the
WAVE system as long as there is a gateway to convert that manufacturer’s radio voice
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
traffic to IP. Thus, multiple disparate two-way radio systems can be connected together
using WAVE, effectively creating a system of two-way radio systems.
The WAVE software enables the creation of an open communications environment that
allows all of the constituent two-way radio systems to maintain their operational
independence while effortlessly removing the barrier of interoperability. WAVE provides
managed, real-time, secure, group communications over the IP network and connects
people who are using dissimilar and often incompatible communications technologies —
such as two-way radios, personal computers, cell phones, and IP phones — into a single,
interoperable and manageable communications system via standards-based IP
communications technology. The product supports any radio system including UHF, VHF,
TETRA, iDEN, SELCAL, GSTAR, and P25.
Integrating WAVE with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
WAVE integrates two-way radio voice solutions with Office Communications Server 2007
via a software plugin developed by Twisted Pair. The plugin allows users running OCS
2007 to monitor radio channels and to talk on any monitored channels directly from the
Office Communicator client as illustrated in figure 1.
Figure 1: The WAVE Office Communicator plugin allows users to monitor and talk on
two-way radio group communications channels from within the Office Communicator
contact list.
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
To use the plugin, users first select a pre-defined profile that identifies the desired twoway radio channels. Once selected, the channels associated with this profile display
under the contact list, as shown on the right side of figure 1. The WAVE plugin also
integrates with Microsoft Active Directory to enable single sign on. Thus, administrators
can easily configure talk or listen-only privileges for Active Directory groups and simply
add users to the groups, making any number of persons capable of monitoring radio
channels and possibly speaking on them.
OCS users need only a microphone and speakers to participate. To activate the
microphone, users simply click with the mouse on a channel’s “Talk” button, and they can
begin speaking on that particular channel.
WAVE Integration with IBM Lotus Sametime
Integrating WAVE with IBM Lotus Sametime is also accomplished through a software
plugin. This plugin allows users running Sametime to monitor radio channels and to talk
on these channels from their Sametime Connect client as illustrated in figure 2.
Figure 2: The WAVE Lotus Sametime plugin allows users to monitor and talk on WAVE
group communications channels from within the Sametime Connect client.
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
With the IBM Sametime plugin, users can monitor multiple channels simultaneously. To
talk on any particular channel, they simply click the “Talk” button associated with that
channel.
Integrating WAVE with IP Telephony
WAVE can also be integrated with telephony solutions either directly, using the WAVE
SDK, or via a voice gateway. Nortel, for example, has gone the extra mile with Twisted
Pair Solutions and has developed a special WAVE IP Phone client for its 1140e IP
phone. The IP Phone client is an XML-based application that runs right on the IP
handset.
Like the PC desktop clients, the Nortel IP phone client displays several channels on the
phone’s LCD interface, which a person may wish to monitor. Users listen to two-way
radio conversations using either the handset or the speaker built into the phone. By
pressing a soft button next to a particular channel, users can talk on that channel using
the IP phone’s handset or speakerphone capability. When a person is using the phone to
talk on a radio channel, the IP packets are routed from the phone to/from the WAVE
Server.
WAVE can integrate with any other phone system using a telephony gateway. With a
voice gateway in place, a dispatcher can dial out to any phone and patch that phone in to
any group radio conversation. Furthermore, conference groups can be set up in WAVE
so that telephone users and two-way radio users can meet together. In this scenario,
telephone users dial into a WAVE session, which is associated with a particular DID or
PBX extension telephone number.
WAVE Solution Architecture
A WAVE system consists of two fundamental server software components and WAVE
clients as illustrated in figure 4. The WAVE server software components are installed on
standard off-the-shelf hardware servers that become part of an organization’s IP
infrastructure. There are two types of WAVE servers: the WAVE Management Server and
the WAVE Media Server.
WAVE Media Server
At the heart of a WAVE deployment is the WAVE Media Server, a software-based media
processing engine that mixes, transcodes, and routes voice traffic between any voice
device connected to the system, including two-way radio, phones, mobile phones,
broadcast systems and unified communications servers. Radio gateways sit between the
various two-way radio systems and the WAVE Media Server. These gateways sample
and encode each radio channel, converting the radio signals into voice IP packets. These
packets are then sent to the WAVE Media Server, which determines which devices are
listening to a particular radio channel and routes the packets to connected devices and
systems as shown in figure 5.
Each WAVE Media Server can comfortably handle 200 simultaneous radio channels.
WAVE Media Servers can be distributed across a wide area network, clustered for
additional capacity, and configured for redundancy.
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PSTN/Cellular
Domain
Cellular Core
PSTN Core
IP Domain
Voice Telephony Gateway
WAVE Communicators
IP PBX
LMR Domain
LAN core
UHF
Radio
WAVE
Media
Server
iDEN
Radio
VHF
Radio
LMR
Gateway
WAVE Unified
Management Communications
Server
Server(s)
Figure 3: Architecture for the WAVE two-way radio unified communications integration.
WAVE Management Server
The WAVE Management Server is a browser-based application that allows
administrators to configure a WAVE solution. It tells the WAVE Media Server which
gateways are connected to the system, and which codec each gateway uses to encode
the radio channels. The WAVE Management Server is also used to configure which
devices can listen to a particular channel and which devices can talk on a particular
channel. The Management Server authenticates devices connecting to the system,
providing a secure wrapper around a WAVE deployment.
A WAVE Management Server can run on the same physical hardware as the WAVE
Media Server in smaller deployments; however, they are typically installed on their own
physical server. Like the WAVE Media Server, WAVE Management Servers are usually
deployed in a redundant configuration. In addition, should all of the Management Servers
be knocked out or powered down for any reason, a WAVE solution will continue to
operate in a “headless” fashion until a Management Server connection is restored. The
ability for a WAVE solution to continue operating without a Management Server is critical
for certain public safety and military applications.
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UC Clients
Analog
Phone
IP
Phone
Cell
Phone
Voice Telephony Gateway
LMR
Gateway
LMR
Gateway
VHF
Radio
UHF
Radio
WAVE Media
Server (Redundant)
Media
Signaling
Figure 4: Connecting disparate two-way radio systems together with unified
communications systems, the WAVE Media Serve allows phone, mobile phone, and PC
users to monitor and speak on the two-way radio channels.
WAVE Communicators and Customization
Twisted Pair Solutions provides five WAVE communicator clients, two for PCs, two for IP
phones (Cisco and Nortel) and one for cellular phones. However, most customers have
particular deployment specifications or require interfaces that are specific to how their
individual organization operates. Consequently, organizations purchase WAVE through a
VAR or an integrator, and these third parties usually create custom interfaces using
WAVE’s Software Development Kit. WAVE was designed with customization in mind, and
VARs are able to easily create user interfaces and integrate WAVE’s functionality in such
a way that the product integrates tightly and properly with any environment where group
unified communications are used.
WAVE Dispatch Communicator
The WAVE Dispatch Communicator is a Windows-based or Linux-based application used
by system operators to manage multiple communications channels simultaneously.
Through this interface, operators can monitor different radio channels from all of the twoway radio systems connected to a WAVE solution and can instantaneously patch
channels together to enable two or more groups to communicate with one another.
Figure 5 shows the WAVE Dispatch Communicator interface.
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Figure 5: The WAVE Dispatch Communicator is an interface that allows operators to
monitor radio channels and patch talk groups together.
In this interface, the list of available radio channels is displayed in the pane to the left.
The center pane shows those channels the operator is currently monitoring, while the
right pane shows channels that have been patched together. Patching two or more
channels together is accomplished using a simple drag and drop capability. Operators
using Dispatch Communicator can instant message one another. Furthermore, operators
are also able to record and playback conversations using this interface.
WAVE Desktop Communicator
The WAVE Desktop Communicator is an application designed for people who need to
listen in to and/or talk on specific channels. These individuals are typically not system
operators.
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
Figure 6: The WAVE Desktop Communicator client.
The Desktop Communicator clearly has less functionality than the Dispatch
Communicator, however, it can be widely deployed, and it allows people connected to a
Windows PC to monitor channels and participate in conversations. User PCs need only a
speaker and a microphone. To talk, they simply push the red “Talk” button, much like
they would push the talk button on a two-way radio.
WAVE Mobile Communicator
The WAVE Mobile Communicator is designed for individuals carrying a Windows Mobile
PDA that can connect to the network over Wi-Fi. Like the Desktop Communicator, people
using the Mobile Communicator can monitor channels and push to talk on any of the
channels they are monitoring.
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
Figure 7: The WAVE Mobile Communicator.
Conclusion
Two-way radio is a missing link in the unified communications strategies for many
companies that rely on two-way radio for their operations. Integrating two-way radio into
the enterprise unified communications solution offers many benefits including:
• The ability to enable radio systems of all types to interoperate together
regardless of make, model and frequency;
• Patching analog, IP and cellular telephones in to the radio network and using
them as push-to-talk devices to transmit and receive radio voice traffic;
• The capacity for Microsoft OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime users to participate in
radio group communications using the same desktop client they would normally
employ;
• Using PCs and PDAs as push-to-talk radios or as end-points for any two-way
radio device.
• Enabling IP phones to act as push-to-talk endpoints using the XML application
interface; and
• Expanding existing group communications systems to include new people, ad
hoc participants, group conferences, and highly mobile employees.
Twisted Pair’s WAVE software fills the gaping hole in many enterprise unified
communications solutions by including two-way radio in the scope of a unified
communications deployment. WAVE has been widely deployed in the public security and
military verticals where the ability to integrate multiple two-way radio systems is critical.
As unified communications rolls out across in the enterprise sector, the ability to integrate
two-way radio systems with phones, soft clients, mobile devices, and UC clients can
significantly accelerate disseminating business information and hasten decision making.
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Integrating Two-Way Radio into Your Unified Communications Environment
About the Author
E. Brent Kelly is a Senior Analyst and Partner at Wainhouse Research specializing in
unified communications applications and enabling infrastructure. Brent has authored
numerous reports and articles on unified communications. Dr. Kelly has authored articles
for Business Communications Review Magazine and taught workshops at major industry
events including VoiceCon. With over 20 years experience in developing and marketing
highly technical products, Brent has served as an executive in a manufacturing firm, and
he was part of the team that built the devices Intel used to test their Pentium
microprocessors. He has also led teams developing real-time data acquisition and control
systems and adaptive intelligent design systems for Schlumberger. Brent has worked for
several other multinational companies including Conoco (now DuPont) and Monsanto.
Mr. Kelly has a Ph.D. in engineering from Texas A&M and a B.S. in engineering from
Brigham Young University.
About Wainhouse Research
Wainhouse Research, www.wainhouse.com, is an independent market research firm that
focuses on critical issues in the Unified Communications and rich media conferencing
fields. The company conducts multi-client and custom research studies, consults with end
users on key implementation issues, publishes white papers and market statistics, and
delivers public and private seminars as well as speaker presentations at industry group
meetings. Wainhouse Research publishes a variety of reports that cover the all aspects
of rich media conferencing, and the free newsletter, The Wainhouse Research Bulletin.
About Twisted Pair Solutions, Inc.
Twisted Pair Solution’s award-winning WAVE software technology enables partners and
customers to build and operate secure, highly scalable communications solutions in the
world’s most demanding IT environments. Recognizing that the best approach to solving
the complexities of communications interoperability is to use software to unify multiple,
diverse communications technologies, WAVE is trusted when communications is
absolutely indispensable. Twisted Pair Solutions is headquartered in Seattle, Washington
USA with offices in New York, the UK and Australia. Visit us at www.twistpair.com
© 2008 Wainhouse Research, LLC
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