It Always Seems Easy Western Systems Profile By: Michael Irvin Ever start a home improvement project only to discover that what you thought needed to be updated or replaced was only a small portion of the resulting project? This “scope creep” is not exclusive to do-­‐it-­‐yourself remodel projects. Agencies wanting to upgrade their traffic systems are many times confronted with the reality of upgrading other components as well. Cities or agencies have to secure funding to do an upgrade, but in reality it rarely just involves the communications. Agencies wanting to upgrade their systems are many times confronted with the reality of upgrading their control cabinets too. “Many of these cabinets and controllers are over 20-­‐years old,” says Kevin Hanson, Territory Manager for Western Systems, Inc. “You can’t even buy a computer to communicate with some of the equipment that’s in those cabinets anymore—it’s all DOS-­‐based.” These agencies quickly discover that in order to make their upgrades work, they need a new controller too. Agencies that think they can simply upgrade their control cabinets are sometimes faced with the same reality. “Some cabinets are just not big enough to upgrade,” Hanson states. “They’re older eight-­‐phase cabinets instead of 16-­‐phase cabinets. You physically can’t get anything else in there. That’s the challenge.” A Case in Point Western Systems, Inc. is one of the Pacific Northwest's leading industrial grade experts for ITS, SCADA and Mobile Data Networking solutions. Founded in 2001, one of Western Systems long-­‐time customers is the Montana Department of Transportation (DOT). “One of our first projects with the Montana DOT was in Great Falls, Montana,” says Hanson. “They had been using serial radios for a long time and they were upgrading their controllers, yet they knew that they needed to upgrade some of their communications as well.” The serial radios that Great Falls initially had in place were capable of 9600 baud, but they were limited to only 1200 baud because their existing controllers could only communicate at that speed. With the advent of all the new equipment that goes into the control cabinet today, that simply wouldn’t do. Today, conflict monitors have Ethernet ports, the Opticom emergency vehicle preemption system has Ethernet on it, and the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) also has Ethernet connections. With this increased connectivity, agencies know if an intersection is running off of battery power, how long they have to get there to plug the generator in, before the intersection goes dark. As a result, most people would never see a problem at that intersection. That’s the type of functionality that Great Falls was looking for; something that had more bandwidth than their legacy system to support this enhanced level of data exchange. What started off as a routine upgrade soon evolved into something more. Questions raised by the Montana DOT engineers resulted in a site survey being completed on some of their buildings. Western Systems brought in a couple of radios just to show how things would work, and the rest, as they say, is history. Sounds Good, But Will it Work As with many engineers, they want to see proof of a concept before they fully endorse a design or an idea. Engineers with Montana DOT were no different. After installing a temporary Pan-­‐Tilt-­‐Zoom (PTZ) camera and successfully transmitting live video streams back to the Public Works building by bouncing it off a couple of Intuicom® BroadBand™ Solution radios, engineers were convinced that wireless solutions could accommodate the bandwidth-­‐intense video Montana DOT expected to generate. As Hanson recalls, “While they initially budgeted to do the controller upgrade, it wasn’t long after that they also budgeted to upgrade their communications infrastructure as well.” Tailored to Fit the Terrain Most of the cities in Montana are surrounded by mountains. This type of terrain favors a central point configuration to pick off of, not to mention that this hub-­‐and-­‐
spoke approach, also keeps the radio waves from running away. “With a range of nearly 60 miles,” Hanson says, “the natural topography of the installations in Montana works out perfectly for wireless radios.” Agencies rarely use wireless solutions for every intersection, but having that option available is sought after because many have a lot of copper interconnect throughout their communities. “Where the copper ends, it’s simply a matter of bringing those intersections back with broadband radios, so they can centrally monitor those intersections,” emphasizes Hanson. “It’s a combination of technologies—a hybrid approach—that they use in order to make all this work in some of these smaller cities.” Competing for Bandwidth When Western Systems began their deployment in Great Falls, they started with Intuicom® BroadBand™ Solutions 5.8GHz radios, and discovered that they had an issue running into some rural Internet Providers who were also utilizing that bandwidth for their wireless communications. They were able to shuffle channels around to avoid conflict, but as the project grew they realized that it could become a concern, so it was determined to move forward on the Public Safety broadband (4.9GHz). It was then that Western Systems introduced Intuicom’s BroadBand™ Solutions 4.9GHz transceivers. “Now, at least in Great Falls, when they hop across the City they’re going to use 4.9’s so they don’t have any disturbances like that,” Hanson said. “With that knowledge, the State of Montana elected to follow our lead and is now requiring 4.9GHz on future deployments so they would have more reliable data access with less channel conflict.” Centralized Management is Key Ultimately, the City of Great Falls deployed a combination of wireless solutions to address their requirements. They installed Intuicom’s 5.8GHz, 300Mbps radios for their backhaul, and Intuicom’s 4.9GHz radios for their intersections, and Intuicom’s BroadBandPro™ Enterprise Management Software to centrally manage all those components. As Montana DOT began adding radios throughout the City of Great Falls and its intersections, they saw that they were able to bring back information from some of their outlying transportation sites and remotely monitor those intersections as well using Intuicom’s centralized management software. Remote monitoring and centralized management is becoming the norm versus the exception nowadays. The efficiencies and savings are pronounced. Now, instead of having to send a technician out to check on an intersection that’s two hours away, you can see what is going on at your intersections directly from your monitor or console. “Management software is part of every discussion I have with a customer,” says Hanson. “Even with a small city like Twin Falls, with 60 intersections, who was looking to deploy wireless radios, we talked about central management software right along with the radios. It just makes sense!” One Thing Leads to Another Initially, Dave Braddon, Intuicom’s ITS Sales Engineer, helped set-­‐up the V-­‐LAN (Virtual Local Area Network) for Great Falls. That ultimately resulted in Western Systems adding more of Intuicom’s BroadBand Solutions radios throughout the state. “We now have radios in Missoula, radios in Billings, and radios in Helena,” Hanson states. “The State of Montana did go out for a communications contract, and partnering with Intuicom, we were able to win that contract too.” Success Breeds Success With the groundwork laid, the seeds of success have been sown for Kevin Hanson and Western Systems, Inc. Yet the real benefactor is going to be the municipalities and agencies serviced by the Montana Department of Transportation who are able to realize the benefits and efficiencies this advanced traffic solution delivers. ###