At the instigation of national and regional governments in both France and Belgium, radio communications in prisons were brought under review. In France a national tender was issued to digital protocol providers giving them the opportunity to show their suitability to cover the needs of a similar common entity with slightly differing requirements.

dPMR was both the original selection and subsequently reselected for a second four year term.

In Belgium dPMR was chosen for the prisons project based on the scalability and the reliability of the solution. A full set of services have been implemented in the prisons for services such as guard tour, indoor tracking of staff etc. In both of the examples above, depending on the size of each prison, coverage requirements, staff tracking requirements using the guard tour system differed slightly at each individual prison. These are both of examples of why dPMR is highly valued for its versatility and reliability.

Europe's Largest Prison: Fleury Merogis

Trunked Migration System from Analogue MPT1327

Fleury Merogis uses a dPMR Mode 3 multisite trunked system; built from an analogue to digital migration installation. The original system was an MPT1327 analogue system and as dPMR is an FDMA based protocol there was an inherent benefit in migrating to an architecturally similar system.

A particular challenge for this transition was the need to use the current MPT system during the phasing in of the dPMR digital system. This required the terminals (analogue terminals from two different manufacturers) and infrastructure of both systems to be able communicate within the same system. The dPMR Mode 3 controller that was used is capable of cross-protocol communications; meaning that there was no need for down time during the digital installation.

Information kindly provided by Icom France S.A.S

System Features

• Two site, 12 channel digital trunking system
• IPBX (SIP) telephone interface
• Communications compatibility (capability) between MPT analogue and dPMR digital terminals. This was done via programming of MPT and dPMR call ID’s in each terminal.
• Backup system with Regional Control Server
• A data channel (status, short messages etc.)
• Safety functions such as man down, stun/kill, ambient listening and radio alarm management
• System management and Dispatch components including asset tracking application to be used in 6 different locations