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Division! Keep up with the
latest products, news and
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Improvements in PassPort
Protocol Facilitate Critical
Communications
Enhanced MDC Brings GPS,
Texting to Icom Radios
Meet Your Icom Team Brian Tobin - Parts Specialist
Accessory of the Month HM170GP Microphone
FR6000 Bridges Facilitys
Analog, Digital Systems

ia

December 2008

Improvements in PassPort Protocol Facilitate

Critical Communications
Icom America is
pleased to announce
that PassPort 4.0
and Passport 2.8 are
available this month
for our F5061/6061
radios.
The
new
generation of PassPort protocol adds enhanced features
emergency declaration, channel
backup and priority access to the
wide area network trunked technology.
Applications can be found wherever
radio systems may carry critical
communications, such as utilities,
governments, manufacturing, college
campuses, public safety, hospitals and
sports arenas.
PassPort 4.0 is definitely a step
up over the classic PassPort protocol

in terms of capitalizing on communications to ensure safety during a crisis

or disaster, said Chis Lougee, Vice
President of Icom America.
An enhanced low-speed trunking
protocol, PassPort was introduced in
the late 1990s. It improves on the popular
single-site LTR trunking protocol by
allowing dispatching over multi-site
networked trunked radio systems and
Continued on page 2

Enhanced MDC Brings GPS Location, Texting

to Icom Radios

2008 Icom America Inc.

The Icom logo is a registered
trademark of Icom Inc. All other
trademarks remain the property
of their respective owners. All
information and specifications
subject to change without notice
or obligation. 10079

When MDC 1200 was introduced

20 years ago, the signaling protocol
was the state of the art, using forward
error correction that vastly improved
data throughput.
MDC 1200 is so effective that the
message will come through even when
the signal is so weak that you cannot
hear any voice, said John Gibbs,
Engineering Manager, Icom America.
There is very little improvement that can
be made on this fundamental over-theair technology today.
Icom engineers recently faced a
daunting task when they went to work
on a new signaling system to replace
MDC 1200. How do you improve on an
incredible success story?
MDC 1200 is probably the most
popular signaling system in the world

and for good reason it really

works, said Gibbs. But
MDC 1200 is missing modern
features, most notably AVL
[automatic vehicle location] and free
text messaging. In addition, the MDC
1200 system has a fixed set of commands and is not expandable or
customizable, he added.
The demand for vehicle location was
a big driver behind Icoms signaling
improvements. Knowing the location of
assets is the key to fleet management,
Continued on page 3
For People Who Make Smart Choices

ianews

Meet Your Icom Team

Brian Tobin
Parts Specialist

Brian Tobin has supported our dealers

as Icom Americas Parts Specialist for
two years, answering phone calls from
dealers and end-users, entering orders and
generally making sure things run smoothly
for the Parts Department. He also works
in conjunction with the Export Team to
provide their customers the repair parts they
need, in addition to processing warranty
claims and orders going to home company
to rejuvenate our stock.
To decrease the inconvenience of
backorders, Brian maintains excellent stock
levels on commonly used items. One of
Brians most important tasks is maintaining
Icoms parts price list (approximately 15,000
parts!), as well as updating part numbers in
AS400 to ease the ordering process.
I dont think they truly understand how
many different parts we have on hand on
a constant basis. At any given time our
department holds between 11,000 and
12,000 parts. We support parts for radios in
every division and can supply parts for almost
every radio Icom has sold in the U.S. market,
said Bryan, when asked what message he
would most like to relate to dealers.
Pre-Icom, Brian held a wide range of
positions; from working in customer service
for G.I. Joes, a librarian at a law firm in
Seattle, and even worked at a family fun
center in Issaquah called Illusionz Magical
Entertainment Center.
Asked the age-old What is the most
rewarding aspect of your job? Brian replied
that it was as simple as hearing how happy
end-users are when they hear we still carry
repair parts for old radios.

Continued from page 1

Improvements in PassPort
Protocol Facilitate

roaming between networked sites. The

built-in receive signal strength indicator
(RSSI) enables seamless roaming. The
radios still offer operation in the basic
LTR and conventional modes.
Individual Selective Call (MIN call)
allows private call between individual
members within a fleet. Primary
Talk Group (all call) allows individual
users to call all groups in the fleet. Other
PassPort features include positive
system management and access control, short message service, telephone
interconnect and voice mail capability.
PassPort 4.0 expands on those
features, allowing a user or system
operator to modify a radio systems
critical communications in concert with
planning for emergencies. A priority
access level may be granted to any
PassPort 4.0 radio, giving higher priority
radios access to available channels
over lower priority radios.
This type of radio system customization is what separates land mobile
radio systems from the cellular network,
Lougee said. In an emergency situation,
cellular networks normally become
jammed with call traffic and will be
unusable. Priority access ensures that
the officials and officers in charge are
able to coordinate vital operations.
Some emergencies are not subject to
planning, such as, if a worker or officer
becomes ill or injured in the field. A
cell phone may be useless to someone
unable to dial a number or to speak.
That is where the emergency declaration

becomes so important. The PassPort

4.0 radio is able to immediately
declare an emergency at the press of
a button, speeding the process of
bringing help.
A radio system going offline can
have many unappealing consequences,
Lougee said. For a factory trying to
maintain a level of productivity, it could
mean a loss of revenue. And it could
mean a life-threatening situation for an
officer trying to communicate with fire
fighters or for a worker switching trains
in the rail yard. To this end, PassPort
4.0 offers home channel backup.
Operators and users who manage
PassPort classic systems may upgrade existing systems to take
advantage of the enhanced PassPort
4.0 features. PassPort 4.0 and the
original PassPort, both operate on
Trident Micro Systems NTS digital
network in the VHF, 217-222 MHz,
UHF, 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz
frequency bands. And each have the
ability to cross-band digital audio.
Passport 2.8 & 4.0 is available as
a firmware upgrade on all new radios
before they are shipped. Software
upgrades in the field are not possible.
Similar to the AES upgrades for P25,
the choice of PassPort version should
be indicated upon order. Icom will add
PassPort to the radio before it ships.

For People Who Make Smart Choices

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December 2008

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Accessory of the Month

Continued from page 1

ianews

Enhanced MDC Brings GPS

Location, Texting to Icom Radios

HM-170GP
Microphone

This microphone has outstanding

protection against dust and water that
is equivalent to IP57. The microphone
can withstand submersion in 1m depth
of water for up to 30 mins and has dusttight construction that prevents the
ingress of dust.

Improved speaker audio quality

and loudness

Includes high performance

GPS receiver
Works with F70/F80 series

reduced operating costs and reduced

liability for companies. For example,
insurance companies are demanding
that school buses have AVL to ensure
the safety of the children. To be efficient,
taxicab companies and delivery services
cannot be wondering about the location
of their fleets.
The result of this engineering effort,
Enhanced MDC (EMDC), integrates GPS
automatic vehicle location and automatic
personnel location with all of the features
of MDC 1200 that users have grown to
depend on. Increased functionality, such
as free-form short text messaging of up
to 48 characters, remote diagnostics, are
also now available. EMDC will be offered
initially in Icoms IC-F70 series portable
and IC-F1721 series mobile radios.
The integration of GPS into the
signaling function also eliminates the
need for external modems, data-only
radios, data-only channels or the
requirement to replace an entire fleet of
radios and infrastructure.
Many existing signaling solutions
have used separate radios on a separate
data channel for AVL, Gibbs said. But
this doubles the radio cost and requires
purchasing from the FCC another
channel that may not even be available
in congested urban environments.

Another important step with EMDC,

Icom radios can now interface with
dispatch software and to mapping
programs. AVL is a lot more than just
sending GPS information. To be useful,
GPS latitude and longitude information
needs to be plotted on a map that the
user can understand, Gibbs said.
Urban environments often require
street maps as the primary display. A
useful feature in this case is address
location. But search and rescue operations also require a topographic map
to plot AVL and automatic personnel
location where a GPS microphone is
used with a portable radio.
EMDC is designed to interface with
multiple mapping vendors to provide the
best solution for a particular application,
Gibbs said. And it can also simultaneously interface to multiple mapping
programs so that the user can use multiple
views and get the best results.

Continued on page 4

For People Who Make Smart Choices

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/ December 2008

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Continued from page 3

ianews

Enhanced MDC Brings GPS

Location, Texting to Icom Radios

With PC control of MDC 1200 and

EMDC functions, EMDC dispatch software and mapping, dealers can now sell
a complete solution: mobile and portable
radios with GPS microphones, repeaters
and base stations, Lougee added.
Other new and unique features that
come with EMDC are remote battery level
and RSSI sensing. The dispatcher can
now monitor a portable radios battery
level and warn the user when he should

recharge his battery. RSSI (received signal strength indicator) enables mapping
of the usable radio area coverage with
actual on the ground measurements.
EMDC also maintains the MDC 1200
signaling features so critical to radio
systems over the last two decades,
including: Call Alert, Radio Check, PTT
ID/Caller ID, Selective Call, Stun/Revive,
Status, Group Calls and Emergency and
audio frequency shift keying, (AFSK)

EMDC is Backward Compatible with MDC 1200

Other signaling solutions, such
as BIIS and FleetSync, require
the replacement of every radio in an
MDC-1200 fleet, even though all that
may be needed is the addition of
new features to only a few radios. For
example, AVL and text messaging may
be needed only in the supervisors or
commanders vehicles.
Icom decided to go a different route
and designed EMDC so that existing
MDC 1200 radios are not left obsolete.
From the users point of view, it
is just the addition of new features,
an incremental change. From the
system view, it is a major improvement, Lougee said. EMDC is
completely backward compatible with
existing MDC 1200 systems, even
those based on competitors radios.
This required clever design to get the
existing MDC 1200 radios to ignore
the EMDC signals.
To be backward compatible with
MDC 1200, EMDC continues to use

the same baud rate of 1200, which

also helps maintain the range of
the radio. Instead of increasing the
data rate, EMDC uses sophisticated
data compression to speed up
transmissions. Without compression,
it takes three to four seconds for
a vehicle to report GPS location
information. For example, a fleet of
50 vehicles reporting their positions
every five minutes would use up half
of the airtime. With data compression,
EMDC transmits GPS signals in only a
third of a second.
One of the fundamental goals in
developing EMDC was to minimize
airtime used for digital signaling. MDC
1200 and EMDC systems are primarily
voice radio systems, with the data
riding in a short burst at the beginning
or end of the transmission, Lougee
said. If the digital signaling takes up
too much airtime, voice communication
becomes impossible.

For People Who Make Smart Choices

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ianews
FR6000 Bridges Facilitys Analog, Digital Systems

Icom America Inc.

2380 116th Ave NE
Bellevue, WA 98004
Phone: (425) 454-8155
Fax: (425) 454-1509
Customer Service: (425) 454-7619

Icom America Systems

Phone: (425) 586-6363
Fax: (425) 586-6321
ias@icomamerica.com

Project partners Ken Aungst of

Washtenaw Communications and Scott
Adams of Adams Distributing needed
to find just the right repeater for a customers new research facility situated on
700 acres in southeastern Michigan.
The customer, a leading automobile manufacturer, wanted to install a
narrowband digital communications
system in its newly constructed research
facility. But it also needed the capability
to communicate with a nearby engineering facility that still operated a conventional analog system. Security was a top
priority, along with superior audio and a
wide channel range.
The requirements were rigid, but the
Icom FR6000 repeater was a slam
dunk, according to Adams.
Flexible and high-performing, the
FR6000 IDAS repeater can receive
both analog and digital signals on a
single channel, allowing the customer to
operate a digital system in the research
facility and still communicate with the
engineering facilitys analog system.
Built on the NXDN common air interface,
the FR6000 also met the customers
tight security specifications.
When this project emerged, Ken and
I began looking at currently available
equipment to provide the users with a
system that operated better than competitive offerings, Adams says. Several
suppliers were consulted, and of the two

that were considered, the Icom system

provided the performance and security the
user desired at almost half the cost. When
Ken presented it, it wasnt even close.
Both Aungst and Adams have
more than 30 years experience in the
LMR industry.
As part of Icoms next-generation
IDAS digital offerings, the FR6000 is
an ideal fit for business and industry
users anticipating a future migration
to advanced digital 6.25 kHz technology. All Icom IDAS products are
compatible with legacy FM analog radio
systems and offer digital/analog mixedmode operation.
In addition to the two FR6000 repeaters installed at the facility, the customer
also purchased 12 F4061 portables and
three F6061 mobile radios configured
as control stations. An F6061 is paired
with each of the repeaters, and a third is
set up as a control station for the existing
analog system at the engineering site.
The portables are primarily used by
security and maintenance personnel.
Installation proceeded without incident, and the system is performing
exactly as designed. The user loves the
system, Adams says.
The facility plans to add additional portables and potentially a third
repeater within the coming months as
additional building phases progress.

For People Who Make Smart Choices

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December 2008

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ianews

Come See Us at the

Following Tradeshows in 2009!
IWCE
March 18 - 20
Las Vegas, NV
ASLRRA Annual
Convention
April 26 28
Red Rock Resort,
Las Vegas, NV

2009

RSSI 49th Annual

C&S Exhibition
May 19 20
Nashville, TN
GSA Expo
June 9 11
Austin, TX
APCO International
August 16 20
Las Vegas, NV
FCCA
October 4 7
Mesa, AZ
AASHTO
October 22 27
Palm Desert, CA
EWA
November 3 6
Atlanta, GA
For People Who Make Smart Choices

All information subject to change without

notice. Please check our website
periodically for the latest updates.

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/ December 2008

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