Public Safety Radio

Pericle has supported the public safety land mobile radio community since 1996 when we were hired by the City of Denver to assist with a particularly difficult 800 MHz interference problem. Our consulting services span the gamut of land mobile radio engineering tasks including coverage modeling, coverage measurements, simulcast network design, portable radio bench measurements, system alignments, interference resolution, microwave path design, RF exposure measurements, 800 MHz rebanding services, traffic engineering, design of distributed antenna systems (DAS) and RFP preparation.

Pericle leans toward a technical rather than managerial approach to consulting. Of our eight employees, five hold 4-year degrees in electrical engineering and one is a senior radio technician with over 30 years of experience with Motorola and Harris land mobile radio systems. Our engineers and technicians are well qualified to design, analyze and test land mobile radio systems and we have a suite of test equipment and engineering software to help us accomplish these tasks.

Our test equipment includes six FieldFox portable cable/spectrum analyzers, an RF network analyzer, PIM tester, multiple analog and digital signal generators, vector signal analyzer, multiple laboratory spectrum analyzers, service monitors, earth tester, test receivers (for drive testing), power meters, and RF exposure meter.

Software packages include EDX Signal™ (for coverage modeling), Arcview (for plotting coverage data), Matlab, Pathloss (for microwave paths), NEC, and ComsitePlus™ (for interference modeling). The company has also developed several custom software programs to control test equipment and process drive test data.

One of our many specialties is the development of RFPs with measurable and enforceable performance standards. Unfortunately, the norm in the land mobile radio industry is a vague description of what the system must do with no clear way to verify compliance. Often the test plan and test standards to prove compliance are left entirely to the vendor. This approach often results in contractual disputes when the low bidder does not deliver the system the customer expected.