But it takes the work of another crucial team for these groups to function: Steve Krigbaum and Jordan Coreson, the radio engineers from Whitman County Emergency Management (WCEM). And frequently, they’re the people responsible for making the winding, sometimes arduous trek up Kamiak Butte to keep the LMR system in working order.
Krigbaum and Coreson’s work is vital to the health and safety of Whitman County. For police and firefighters, the ability to radio for help can determine who survives an emergency. And for the residents of Whitman County, the availability of emergency radio means security for their families and neighbors.
“Audio quality is everything. It’s not the important thing. It’s the only thing. At the end of the day, my success or failure is entirely measured by the quality of audio that got through the air. ”
For Krigbaum, the need to keep Whitman County first responders safe is what drives him. But unfortunately for WCEM, the quality of their radio system left much to be desired.
Audio quality was often poor due to faulty synchronization, but that was far from the only problem. Among other issues, remote radio equipment shelters, like the one at Kamiak Butte, are rarely climate-controlled, allowing temperatures to reach extremes that cause devices to fail.
Luckily for WCEM, the community they serve was ready to help make their radio system better—and protect their first responders.
An Unexpected Opportunity
As one summer came to a close, the punishing heat that had taxed the WCEM radio system brought Krigbaum’s frustrations to a boiling point.
The board at WCEM called Krigbaum to report on the radio disruptions they were experiencing. Facing Whitman County police, fire, and EMS leaders, he explained the issues causing the radios to fail. And one particular component was frequently at fault—the clock.
LMR towers rely on specialized clocks to synchronize each radio tower in the network. Without precise synchronization, the audio the system produces is unintelligible, endangering the first responders who rely on it to call for backup. Over the years, the clocks Krigbaum and WCEM depended on had earned a reputation for poor reliability.
The clocks at WCEM had also failed in other ways. In one incident, a software update introduced a memory leak that WCEM could only fix by periodically turning the clock off and on.
And there were larger issues with the architecture of their radio network. Because radio towers often house telecom equipment for multiple parties, unintended interactions between these systems can cause broadcast storms to occur—often with debilitating consequences.
“In one case, they had a broadcast storm that entirely pushed out radio traffic to the point where we could not dispatch radio,” Krigbaum recounts. “We were dead in the water for many hours.”
Another challenge facing the radio engineers was lack of visibility over the health of their system. To know if their LMR system was functioning correctly, they’d have to check each component individually. And if they detected a problem at a remote radio tower, fixing it often required a site visit. Depending on the season, Krigbaum and Coreson might only be able to reach the site via snow machine or all-terrain vehicle.
As Krigbaum explained these LMR system challenges to the board, he received an offer from an unexpected community resource. Volunteer Fire Chief Rob Shindler offered him a lifeline—knowledge that a local company was in the business of producing ultra-reliable communications equipment for critical infrastructure, and that they might have a solution for WCEM.
As Krigbaum recalls, “Sitting across the table from me was an SEL employee who was also a fire chief. So, Rob Shindler says, ‘Well, we make clocks. Let’s see if we can make something work here.’”
A Solution Built for Critical Infrastructure
As it happens, the Whitman County volunteer fire chief also managed an engineering team at SEL—coincidentally, whose campus neighbored WCEM. While Shindler engaged SEL research and development to adapt its clock to serve emergency communications, another SEL team knocked on WCEM’s door. Justin Spencer, an SEL factory representative, introduced himself to Krigbaum and Coreson. During a tour of WCEM’s site, Spencer saw that SEL could offer more than precise timing. So, he invited Krigbaum and Coreson to meet with leaders from SEL to better understand how they could help.
In this meeting, including SEL R&D leads Dan Rippon and Dr. Ryan Bradetich, Krigbaum laid out his needs.
“At the end of the day, we need three fundamental things for our infrastructure. We need reliable network security. We need to know the health and condition of the radios out there in the world, and we need precise timing.”
As SEL listened, they realized that the devices they had developed for critical infrastructure were perfectly equipped to make LMR systems more effective. In doing so, they could serve the people that protect their community.
SEL envisioned a system that works like this: SEL satellite clocks would synchronize the transmission and reception of radio signals. For cybersecurity and protection against broadcast storms, SEL software-defined networking (SDN) switches could provide a deny-by-default infrastructure for WCEM networks. SEL could also use Axions and RTACs (two types of real-time automation controllers) to provide a single interface to monitor and resolve faults anywhere in the LMR system.
“Those are all things that are within our wheelhouse from the electric utility industry,” Bradetich reflects. “Can we use our software-defined networking to secure your communications? And can we use our RTAC and Axion to provide remote monitoring? Now you really have one source of truth for your entire setup.”
Krigbaum was enthusiastic. “If I can do that with a mouse click, that by far beats driving an hour and a half to unlock a radio site, kick the snow off my boots, apply the index finger of doom, lock the radio site up, and drive an hour and a half back.”
Now with a clear vision, Rippon and Bradetich challenged their teams to develop a prototype in short order. To truly validate it under challenging circumstances, SEL needed to deploy the prototype during the peak of summer temperatures. While SEL engineers its devices to withstand temperature extremes from –40° to +185°F (–40° to +85°C), they would need to prove it to WCEM during a real-world test.
With the blessing of WCEM, they would install the prototype at five LMR sites, alongside the county’s legacy devices. After activating the prototypes, the radio system would self-perform a head-to-head test between the SEL solution and the existing equipment. The system would automatically select whichever provided the best audio for use.
As SEL began installing prototypes around Whitman County, temperatures were already approaching their zenith.
Almost immediately, the results were positive.
Despite the high heat, the system unanimously voted to use the SEL prototypes, choosing them over the existing equipment.
“It’s been a vast improvement on audio quality as we see it in our system,” Krigbaum observes. “And I think that speaks volumes when a prototype can outperform what had been your gold standard.”
Looking Ahead for LMR
As Krigbaum and Coreson look toward the future, they think about what their efforts mean for anyone who uses LMR.
“There’s even more that we can do,” says Coreson. “Not making a three-hour round trip just to go flip a power switch is massive. And I’m very excited to see what else we might be able to monitor in the future that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
For his part, Shindler reflects on this effort as a member of the community, an employee at SEL, and the leader of the volunteer fire department. He hopes this work means that the people who answer the call in an emergency can do so with full faith in their tools.
“I hope that they don’t have to worry about the radios,” he says. “That they can do their job and not have to worry about what they didn’t hear or what they thought they heard. That’s the most exciting thing.”
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