Rohde & Schwarz equips Al Massira International Airport with voice communications system

Rohde & Schwarz Topex SA has delivered a state-of-the-art ATC communications system including the fully IP-based R&S VCS-4G voice communications system to Al Massira International Airport in Agadir, Morocco.   
   
Bucharest/Munich, June 4, 2013 — Following an order placed with Rohde & Schwarz Topex SA by the Office National des Aeroports (ONDA, Morocco’s national airport authority), the new voice communications system (VCS) has been delivered to Al Massira International Airport. The new IP-based system uses gateways to interconnect to existing radio stations and to PSTN, PBX or telephones, protecting the investment made in the past. The VCS is built on a fully redundant architecture and contains 14 controller working positions distributed over several locations at the airport, including the tower, approach and technical room.   
   
The main challenge for the new system was to integrate and share the radio resources with the two existing VCSs used by ONDA in the control tower. Thanks to special line switching devices, these radio resources can now be used from any of the three VCSs at Al Massira Airport.   
Besides the complete redundancy for the VCS, Rohde & Schwarz Topex provides a bypass device as last resource to enable radiocommunications at any time.   
   
In addition, the all-IP approach of the R&S VCS-4G made it easy to implement VPN-based communications with Casablanca and Inezgane airports. Dedicated media gateways were installed at the three locations in order to ensure secure voice over IP (VoIP) communications.   
   
VoIP in line with EUROCAE ED-137 is the upcoming communications technology for ATC. The fully IP-based R&S VCS-4G voice communications system adheres to this standard. Rohde & Schwarz added the R&S VCS-4G state-of-the-art solution to its ATC portfolio in the spring of 2011. The R&S VCS-4G features a fully redundant design with a large number of interfaces to external systems such as a voice recording system and telephone lines. The scalable system can be easily expanded.   
   
Contact:   
Catalin Burdujan, Technical Sales Manager, Phone: +40 21 408 39 14,    
E-mail: catalin.burdujan@rohde-schwarz.com