Availability and Security for Alert Management in Critical Areas
How to establish communication between the control center of the Barcelona Airport and the 17 devices responsible for the LVP protocol warning? We'll tell you here...
An air terminal requires total control of activities so that its operation develops normally. The coordination and continuity of each of the tasks is as necessary to deliver an excellent service to the users of the facilities, as it is fundamental to guarantee critical issues such as the safety of the operations that are carried out there. In the specific case of Barcelona Airport, among other protocols, the ‘Reduced Visibility Procedures’ (LVP) stands out, specially designed to guarantee the correct operation of aircraft and ground personnel, both in the maneuvering area and on the platform, despite the existence of adverse visibility conditions due to natural phenomena (night, fog, rain…) or eventual (the smoke from a fire).
The problem
Barcelona Airport has a type of protocol that, if applied incorrectly, can have very negative consequences. As a starting point, it requires total automation and robustness of the operation for its total operation. The LVP system works as a series of correlative operations whose ultimate purpose is to deliver an alert to the operators of the facilities: once a reduced visibility scenario is detected automatically from the Control Center, the order is launched for 17 panels located in different points of the terminal turn on the light signal that will indicate to the personnel of the installation that the LVP mode has been activated, and that therefore, they have to apply the protocols defined for it. But, How to establish communication between the control center of the Barcelona Airport and the 17 devices responsible for the LVP protocol warning?
The solution
Through the robustness offered by the TETRA communications network. According to Josep Rodrigo, application consultant at Logitek: “Beyond the usual voice communication functionalities of the TETRA network, Barcelona Airport uses this network to give the order to its LVP devices to activate the reduced visibility protocol of the facilities.” In this way, the use of the LKtetra Router technology for the communication and monitoring of these devices gives shape to an innovative proposal for the management of large public facilities: the security and reliability of the TETRA network is used for the implementation of a new control and monitoring architecture providing maximum guarantees.
The implementation of LKtetra devices as technology for communication between each of the panels located on the service roads of the Terminal and the Control Center of the same has made it possible to provide the Airport with a new robust communication architecture, with the high availability required by a critical alert management process, in which implementation costs are also substantially reduced given the use of an already existing network.
