MDC Support
( Mobile Digital Computer )
Wireless network management is one of our MAGUS™ switches' adjunctive features. We style the facility "MAGUS RF," the RF referencing radio frequency.
Radio Frequency carries packets of digital data between MAGUS RF servers and their client mobile data computers (MDC's). Currently, our MAGUS RF switches control about three thousand MDC's.
To mediate the exchange of data between, for example, your CAD system and your MDC's, (say, laptops) MAGUS RF switches use either of two commercially supported protocols: CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) and
Mobitex. If your area hasn't coverage for either of these widely available protocols, we can customengineer another.
In saying these two digital data protocols are "commercially supported," we mean that a local wireless carrier owns and operates the radio frequency elements of the network (i.e., the transmitter and base
station). Carriers provide these facilities as fee-bearing service.
Often, effective price competition between the two protocol's local carriers prompt economic wireless benefits. Typically, these carriers offer both flat rate periodic tariffs (say, $45 per month per MDC) and
tariffs that vary with use. If you choose to deploy Magus RF feature, we will, if you wish, aid you in negotiations with your carrier.
Wireless service can be used variously in public service. It can allow your MDC's to act almost as CAD clients, or other workstations, within the authority granted each user/terminal combination by your
agency's policies.
There is one important difference between MDC's and locally networked workstations. That difference is the speed with which they and their servers can exchange data. Local terminals and their remote
servers typically exchange data at theoretical throughput of 10 to 100 million bits (roughly a 1-10 million characters) per second.
CDPD and Mobitex's current implementations limit such rates to between 4000 and 19,200 bits per second, or, at their fastest–roughly 400 to 2000 characters per second.
For reasons outside the scope of this brief, actual throughput is less...much less in metropolitan areas. In any case, it is our job to minimize your particular application's response times. Doing so
requires we understand well both its dynamic and your area's RF environment.
As we said above, wireless can serve several needs. Dispatcher's can inform field units they've been assigned to an incident, with that incident's type, location and other immediately germane details.
Any emergency vehicle, Police, Fire, or EMS, can periodically update their status (e.g., in route, arrived on scene, request for backup, etc.). Field reports can be composed on MDC's and submitted. As authorized, field staff can pose queries of a number of public safety databases (e.g., wants and warrants, criminal history, vehicle data, license data, etc.).
MAGUS also, adjunctively, enables field staff to carry both MDC's and smaller, hand-held devices, sometimes called Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's).
PDA's can be linked either to their accompanying MDC's via Wireless Ethernet (IEEE 802.11b,) or directly to the MAGUS switch, via RF.
We show both methods in the diagram, overleaf.
PDA's linked directly to their MDC's enjoy RF connection to MAGUS via the MDC's channel. This saves the extra tariff for a carrier-mediated PDA/MAGUS channel. Because of the high speed of the PDA/MDC link (IEEE 802.11b), the perceptible difference in response time is nil.
LEVEL II's MAGUS switches provide as broad a range of services and as fine performance as is available at any cost. Still, they offer the least costly combination of RF support and a full service public safety switch in the market. We urge you to discuss both your switching and RF network needs with us.
Click here to download our MAGUS RF brochure.
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