CASE STUDY: Codan’s HiveNet in operation

Codan’s HiveNet is helping a California Sheriff’s department stay connected in difficult circumstances.

Monterey County in California covers approximately 10,000 square kilometres and is home to a large lake, a national forest, national park, several state, county and regional parks, the world-famous Carmel Valley and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The county has extremely diverse terrain conditions ranging from farmland to jagged cliffs.

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office has approximately 320 sworn Deputy Sheriffs working in a variety of assignments including three patrol stations in various parts of the county, plus an investigations unit and a jail with 1100 inmates.

Special units include the Radio Communications Support Team, SWAT, Hostage Negotiators, Search and Rescue, Dive Rescue, Air Unit and numerous others.

“Because of the challenging terrain we have in Monterey County combined with our large territory, we have many areas of the county that either do not have any radio coverage or do not have radio channel capacity to deal with lengthy emergencies,” says William C Hija, Deputy Sheriff and a member of the Radio Communications Support Team.

Courtesy a7pointstar/Flickr.com

“The Radio Communications Support Team uses a variety of equipment to bring radio coverage and high-speed data to Deputies when our infrastructure cannot.”

The Sheriff’s Office is in the process of transitioning from VHF conventional analog to P25 multiband (VHF and 700 MHz) trunking.

“We temporarily migrated to an analog VHF conventional vote scan radio system that is working well for us, until our trunking system is operational,” says Hija. “Currently we only have one voice channel for all of our patrol operations county-wide, and this causes capacity issues. We are hoping to have our 11-channel trunking system online soon.”

Filling the gap

“We have coverage or capacity gaps all over the county,” says Hija. “Previously we used a UHF Codan ET-6 (Vizor) repeater, which worked well but only allowed us a small area of coverage, and of course the repeater had to be located in an area that was optimal for propagation.”

With such complex terrain and challenging communications issues, the Sheriff’s Office decided it needed to seek a solution that would not only fit in with its extant technology, but which is also portable.

Enter Codan Radio Communications’ HiveNet. HiveNet is an easily deployable and field-agile, wide-area conventional repeater network - essentially, a network of repeaters joined by RF links. Linked repeaters can be added or removed at any time, enabling a widely configurable system with an expandable area of coverage for mobile and portable radios. The network  is also self-healing.

These features are what attracted the Sheriff’s Office to HiveNet. “It’s the ability to choose between wide area coverage or the ability to set up the system where it is tactically feasible, instead of having to set it up where the optimal propagation would be achieved,” says Hija.

The HiveNet unit.

The easily transportable HiveNet is available in analog or analog-plus-P25 configurations, providing full compatibility with legacy equipment. In P25 mode, the unit passes all encrypted voice and data transparently through the repeater network. HiveNet itself does not need or contain any encryption in order to pass encrypted signals through the repeater and links.

The Sheriff’s Office acquired HiveNet in early 2014.

“Our original goal in purchasing HiveNet was to cover a large area for our SWAT Team, which HiveNet does,” says Hija. “When we purchased it we did not think of the benefit that deploying a vote scan system can have tactically. In normal circumstances you are going to deploy your tactical repeater where it can cover your operational area. You would naturally want to put it on high ground or in some other location that may not be tactically feasible.”

Easy to use

The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office Radio Communication Support Team trains twice each month with all of its gear.

“The first thing we do is set up HiveNet and create our own wide-area radio net,” says Hija. “Operating HiveNet is not difficult, although it does take an understanding of radio propagation so that you can be confident that you will be able to link the sites together.

“We are also part of a County Wide Communications Task Force that we co-founded with the City of Salinas Fire Department,” adds Hija. “A founding principle of the task force was to leverage the equipment each agency has, so that as a team we have a robust response to any emergency situation.”

In real-world use, the Sheriff’s Office has found that HiveNet gives them flexibility to deal with communications challenges as they arise.

“With the HiveNet we send one unit, or site, in a vehicle that travels to the scene with SWAT,” says Hija. “They can use that site for communications from the time they leave the station until they reach the scene, which provides them seamless encrypted communications and negates any need to change channels when they arrive on scene.

“We send our other HiveNet sites in to fill in coverage gaps created when we place our HiveNet repeaters in locations that are tactically optimal, as opposed to locations optimal for RF propagation.”

Other HiveNet customers

Codan’s HiveNet has found favour with a number of public safety and security organisations around the globe. In Canada, the British Columbia Ministry of Forests has a system that comprises more than 350 fixed, solar-powered HiveNet sites on remote mountaintops. Each radio network connects seven to 15 HiveNet sites to each other and the local Forest District office, enabling users to roam within that network. As well, users can connect to neighbouring Forest District networks through the use of a DTMF code activated on the keypad of their handheld radios. When a large forest fire or other critical situation occurs, the Ministry of Forests can rapidly deploy a transportable HiveNet network to add radio coverage to the affected area.

In the US, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) has added HiveNet repeaters to its national cache for wildland firefighting and other emergency requirements. NIFC has found the system is ideal for national deployment because of its ease of use and for its ability to be configured to meet the demands of the communications requirements across the entire country.

And an unnamed government organisation uses HiveNet for undercover operations such as tracking wanted suspects. Undercover personnel use hidden, encrypted P25 radios as they follow their targets and, as they move through different areas of the operation, the radio scans to an available repeater. (HiveNet repeaters issue ‘pings’ at time intervals to enable scanning radios to lock onto the closest repeater.) The repeaters are mounted inside vehicles and are fully mobile. All traffic heard by one repeater will transmit out all other repeaters via a UHF link, enabling every agent to communicate regardless of the associated repeater.