911 radio tower may not be built in Hollywood park, county says (Florida)

[rivermersey]

911 radio tower may not be built in Hollywood park, county says

Susannah BryanContact ReporterSouth Florida Sun Sentinel

A huge radio tower designed to improve the county’s spotty 911 system may not be coming to West Lake Park after all.
Hollywood scored a small but key victory Tuesday in its battle to keep the 32-story metal tower out of the park, a pretty spot popular with kayakers, cyclists and young families.

Broward commissioners agreed 8-1 to consider an alternate spot offered up by the city: the rooftop of the newly built Circ apartment tower downtown.
But should that plan not work out, county commissioners made it clear they’ll take the fight to court unless Hollywood comes around.

“If there’s going to be a long delay [for an engineering study], I want us to move ahead,” County Commissioner Steve Geller said. “We have to get this online quickly.”

Two deadly massacres — the Parkland school shooting in February 2018 and the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting in January 2017 — exposed glaring problems with the county’s emergency communications system.

Both tragedies required a massive police response, but the radio system couldn’t handle the swarm of officers trying to use their radios at the same time. Unable to talk to dispatchers or one other, many were forced to use hand signals to communicate.
The tower, one of seven going up around Broward, is needed to upgrade the county’s patchy 911 communications system, county officials say.

They want all seven towers up and running by December.
County Commissioner Barbara Sharief had harsh words for Hollywood on Tuesday.
“I really don’t think those parents who lost their kids give a damn about where we put this tower,” she said. “I’m not worried about grass and trees right now. I don’t need to sit here for two hours. Let’s make a decision to get this done.”

 

[Gmork]

This is part of the new P25 system install after recommendations from Motorola.. They (citizens) rather built the site on top of a building where we (taxpayers) have to pay monthly rent instead of inside of the park which the county owns, where there would be no monthly rent for the site. Radio towers are scary, they can gobble up people.

 

[TampaTyron]

Dont forget all the radiation they spew! Que the picture of steam escaping a power plant cooling tower as "pollution"! TT

 

[Giddyuptd]

They wouldn't want a 700mhz tower, you know them scary p25 radiation waves but want and would jump on 5g cells every 500 feet. Amazing how the minds out there think.

 

[jeffdafoe]

The funny thing is there was a gigantic water tower at the entrance to that park that was removed within the last 5 or so years, so a tower at the same location would've been less obtrusive than what had been there since forever.

 

[Gmork]

The funny thing is there was a gigantic water tower at the entrance to that park that was removed within the last 5 or so years, so a tower at the same location would've been less obtrusive than what had been there since forever.

As a kid I remember that tower, you are absolutely correct.

 

[ResQguy]

"a pretty spot popular with kayakers, cyclists and young families"

Statistically, the people most likely to need 911 services in a park. Ironic.

 

[chief21]

Two deadly massacres — the Parkland school shooting in February 2018 and the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting in January 2017 — exposed glaring problems with the county’s emergency communications system.
Both tragedies required a massive police response, but the radio system couldn’t handle the swarm of officers trying to use their radios at the same time. Unable to talk to dispatchers or one other, many were forced to use hand signals to communicate.
The tower, one of seven going up around Broward, is needed to upgrade the county’s patchy 911 communications system, county officials say.

This is interesting. On the surface, it sounds as if the problem might have been related to the issue of too many folks trying to talk at the same time on a single talk path (ie CONGESTION). That problem can only be solved by improved channel discipline or having fewer radios on the channel. To my mind, seven additional sites would provide a substantial improvement in system penetration and overall system COVERAGE, but would do little to address the issue of congestion on a single talk path.

If, on the other hand, the problem is actually related to total system CAPACITY, rather than channel CONGESTION or system COVERAGE, what improvement will additional sites provide? It sounds as if additional talk paths (frequencies), added to the existing system, would be required to actually provide additional system capacity.

The construction of seven additional sites of a county-wide trunked radio system is a massive expenditure. I hope it can actually prevent future issues of this type.

What do you think?

 

[TampaTyron]

Get out of here with that logic and reasoning crap! We got systems to sell and build. TT

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

This is interesting. On the surface, it sounds as if the problem might have been related to the issue of too many folks trying to talk at the same time on a single talk path (ie CONGESTION). That problem can only be solved by improved channel discipline or having fewer radios on the channel. To my mind, seven additional sites would provide a substantial improvement in system penetration and overall system COVERAGE, but would do little to address the issue of congestion on a single talk path.

If, on the other hand, the problem is actually related to total system CAPACITY, rather than channel CONGESTION or system COVERAGE, what improvement will additional sites provide? It sounds as if additional talk paths (frequencies), added to the existing system, would be required to actually provide additional system capacity.

The construction of seven additional sites of a county-wide trunked radio system is a massive expenditure. I hope it can actually prevent future issues of this type.

What do you think?

It was more a problem with control channel congestion than talk path congestion.

The original 3600 CC system used a control channel protocol called Slotted ALOHA that basically is a barely disciplined first come first serve basis for channel requests and grants. Normally you get a channel grant in a few dozen milliseconds and a channel established in under 500 milliseconds (plus some digital latency in a phase 1 system).

When there are collisions of incoming requests, and a radio fails to get a channel grant, the radio would wait a small period and then try again many times. When you get a bunch of traffic and folks making channel changes on their radios (affiliations), the control channel runs out of time slots to fill those requests so users get an out of range bonk for a period. The collapse is pretty abrupt and Motorola likes to call it in terms of "load shedding" but really it is an overload and is ungraceful in that priority and non priority traffic are equally hampered. It happens from time to time on any similar system.

The new phase 2 9600 control channel protocol has split the CC resource into two "inbound channels" and in theory has greater capacity. I don't have all the details but I would imagine it has smarter ways to prioritize channel or affiliation requests.

 

[chief21]

When you get a bunch of traffic and folks making channel changes on their radios (affiliations), the control channel runs out of time slots to fill those requests so users get an out of range bonk for a period. The collapse is pretty abrupt and Motorola likes to call it in terms of "load shedding"...

Aha... I totally forgot about the affiliation factor. Obviously, users in areas far from the incident can add to the congestion even as they tune in to the "action", just to listen.