By James Careless

The state of New Mexico is the fifth largest state in the United States, according to http://www.netstate.com. All told, it covers 121,598 square miles: a vast area covered by just 525 officers of the New Mexico State Police.

Given that only two million people live in New Mexico, according to http://www.edd.stste.nm.us–this desert territory can be a lonely and dangerous place for officers. Moreover, the distances between towns are so large in some areas that terrestrial radio signals cannot cover it all.

"Fifteen percent of the state isn’t covered by New Mexico State Police (NMSP) radio at all," says Al Lewis, New Mexico’s chief of radio maintenance. As for the other 85 percent? It does have voice communication, but noy data. In fact, when it comes to the NMSP’s mobile data services, "we have no terrestrial system at all," adds Maj. Randall Bertram, the NMSP’s chief of special operations. "None of the 70 NMSP towers broadcast data, and none of the patrol cars have terrestrial data terminals."

Thankfully, satellite is coming to the New Mexico State Police’s rescue through a partnership between Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) and EMS Technologies. Between them, these two satellite companies have devised a solution that keeps NMSP officers in touch wherever they are.

Taking The Guesswork Out Of Police Work

The solution starts with MSV’s MSAT 1 L-band/Ku-band satellite. Located in geostationary orbit with complete North American coverage (plus landing rights in Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela) and downlinked to an earth station in Ottawa, MSAT 1 delivers 9,600 bits per second to and from mobile satellite users. "It doesn’t matter where they are," says Phil Clarke, MSV’s director of business development. "Thanks to our L-band uplink–which is impervious to rain fade–we can receive their signals."

The second part of the solution is EMS Technologies’ PDT-100 satellite packet data terminal. In size, the PDT-100 is small. Only 7.8" in diameter by 5.8" tall and weighing three pounds, it looks like an externally-mounted "hard hat." But make no mistake: in performance, the PDT-100 is very big, indeed. When connected to a Panasonic Toughbook laptop computer inside an NMSP cruiser, "the PDT-100 serves as a satellite receiver, transmitter and omni-directional antenna," says Jay McMillan, EMS Technologies’ director of sales and marketing for the company’s Land Mobile Group. "It does it all."

For the NMSP, the PDT-100 provides a reliable data link back to Santa Fe. This means no more guessing when officers pull a suspicious car off the road. Within seconds, the MSV satellite radio system gives them the license and/or driver information they need to make the right call.

In addition, in areas where terrestrial voice radio cannot cut through, the MSV solution offers two ways to communicate. First, the PDT-100 supports the industry standard GSM Short Messaging Service (SMS). Just as they could with a text-enabled cell phone–as long as they were within sight of a tower–officers can exchange short messages via satellite using their in-car laptops. Second, MSV’s MSAT network can also support voice traffic via satellite. In fact, "we have already tested satellite voice in one of our patrol cars," says Maj. Bertram. "Now, the latency that comes from bouncing signals up to space and back, which is about four seconds, does tend to make normal conversation difficult. However, if you conduct communications along the lines of traditional ‘push-to-talk’ radio communications, it’s quite usable."

Of course, latency is technically an issue for data communications as well as voice. However, thanks to the nature of data, officers do not notice any delays, says Major Bertram. "At most, it can take about 10 seconds to get the answer back from our main computer," he explains. "However, once again this is a great improvement on the old way of doing things. Before satellite, officers would have to ask the dispatcher on duty to look licences up for them. If the dispatcher was busy, this would result in the officers essentially ‘waiting in line’ until she had a chance to get to their requests."

Progress To Date…And Future Plans

The NMSP’s satellite data system officially went live in November 2002. Not surprisingly, the testing period had its challenges. For instance, special software had to be custom-written so that the PDT-100s could communicate with the NMSP information database.

Still, the system has generally worked as promised. This is why the NMSP plans to increase the number of patrol cars equipped with PDT-100s from the current 50 to 160, once funding becomes available. Eventually, all of the state’s 410 NMSP cruisers will have their own PDT-100 terminal, ensuring that officers are never out of touch.

Meanwhile, Lewis sees a day when the PDT-100’s GPS capability can be used as well. Specifically, each PDT-100 comes with a built-in GPS receiver that continuously tracks each car’s physical position. One day the NMSP network will be equipped to relay this data back to headquarters in Santa Fe. With this data, dispatchers will know the location of the entire NMSP fleet at a glance. Not only will this make it easier to dispatch the closest cars where they are needed, but it will also help locate officers in trouble out in the desert.

All told, satellite-backed radio is paying big dividends for the NMSP. "We’re very pleased with the direction we’re going in now," Maj. Bertram says. "Moving to satellite radio has definitely improved enforcement operations and officer safety."

James Careless is senior contributing editor to Via Satellite.