LTE  |  2022-03-17

POCSTARS Delivers PoC System to Large International Airport in Asia

Source: The Critical Communications Review | Gert Jan Wolf editor

The whole system passed all the tests and was formally put into use in February 2022, facilitating seamless communications among the staff of airlines, airport services, and the control center.

POCSTARS, a world leading Push-to-talk over Cellular (PoC) solution provider, recently has completed the deployment of its advanced PoC communications system for a big international airport in Asia. The whole system passed all the tests and was formally put into use in February 2022, facilitating seamless communications among the staff of airlines, airport services, and the control center. 

As early as September 2021, the representatives of the airport talked with POCSTARS and listed some problems that they faced with their existing push-to-talk services. They were looking for a better solution, as the airport was in urgent need of solving the server downtime and PoC services interruption. Overall, the downtime was too long and the repair was time-consuming, making it impossible to offer reliable 24/7 Push To Talk services. In addition, the airport needed to safely store the data to prevent data loss. Also the PTT voice quality of the old communications system was poor and voice calls were not clear enough.

On an operational level, as the crew for each flight varies, it was also no possible for the PoC system to support the feature of rapidly creating temporary groups to meet the dispatching needs.

In addition to the above mentioned issues and to serve the need for reliable and future proof communications, the Airport needed to implement multimedia messaging and crew positioning were required.

Considering customers’ pain points, POCSTARS analyzed the needs and designed a PoC communications and dispatching system that meets the specific needs of airport staff. The Highly Available Hot Standby (HAHS) Solution solved issues that had been with the legacy system for quite a while. The highlights are as follows:

  1. There are two local servers, one main server and one standby server. When one server fails, another server takes over. It ensures that PoC services will not be cut off due to the server downtime. By using POCSTARS HAHS solution, the server downtime can be shortened within one minute.
  2. Besides two local servers, POCSTARS deployed an additional server in another city, which is one more layer of insurance for data safety.
  3. Since the airport crew experienced poor PTT voice quality with their legacy system, POCSTARS PoC system aims to resolve this issue with the feature of adjusting terminal speech quality. From the admin panel, agents can easily modify the parameters of heartbeat and speech quality. The lower the heartbeat, the greater the traffic and power consumption will be. For speech quality, High Quality Mode is selected by default and agents can also select Fluent Mode on the admin panel.
  4. To enable rapid temporary group setup, POCSTARS has added a new feature “Address List” to the dispatch console. In addition to creating a temporary group by ticking members of the Group List, dispatchers can now rapidly create a temporary group by ticking members from different departments and managerial levels.
  5. POCSTARS PoC system also has versatile multimedia messaging features, such as sending text, picture and video messages and video streaming. POCSTARS PoC system provides positioning services such as Real-time Positioning, distance measurement, track playback, geo-fence, and geo-group. These features perfectly meet the requirements of the airport.

This case is a typical independent deployment solution with local high availability and remote data backup. It provides 24/7 services and prevents data loss. The system meets the needs of the airport and improves work efficiency across teams. This HAHS solution has been highly recognized by the airport managers.