The Opportunity
If you have clients that are operating analogue repeaters with groups sharing a single channel, then this can cause issues with trying to separate groups with 5-tone or everyone having to overhear conversations that don’t necessarily apply.
When upgrading an analogue repeater to digital, your Client has the benefit of an additional channel (2 channels for one on a digital repeater) & they can split out some of the groups. The potential difficulty then arising is that making an ‘all-call’ to users is much more difficult & users may have issues changing channels to talk to a group & not switch back to their own channel.
The Answer
Capacity Plus is a Motorola digital repeater application that comes in the form of a licence code which can be simply activated within the digital repeater itself.
Once activated, the application will provide radio users with a ‘pooled’ resource of channels (two per repeater) whereby a channel is automatically allocated to a call rather than the ‘user’ selecting the channel manually. This offers a far superior grade of service.
The channel switch on the radio becomes a contact list whereby groups or individual calls can be programmed. Radio users can simply select a group or individual on the channel switch & hit the PTT button to initiate a call. The called group or individual is then allocated a channel for the duration of the conversation. All other radios remain completely quiet.
On a single repeater with Capacity Plus, you can have up to two simultaneous conversations. If you “daisy chain” another digital repeater with Capacity Plus activated, this will give you up to four simultaneous conversations. Currently the maximum number of voice repeaters you can have on a Capacity Plus system is six, which would give you 12 channels. Further repeaters can be added for data requirements only.
The beauty of this Capacity Plus solution is that one of the groups could be an ‘all call’ which will bring all radios to the channel automatically & it is also possible to have considerably more groups than channels available. Take a scenario where Security, Maintenance & Cleaning groups are sharing a single analogue channel with only one conversation at a time & each having to listen to each other. With a digital repeater & Capacity Plus, all these groups can operate independently & the system will provide up to two simultaneous conversations. Furthermore, you can add more groups (such as a Contractors group, a First Aiders group & Supervisors group) & these will operate independently & effectively on the Capacity Plus system. Radio users can also be members of multiple groups for more flexibility.
If a radio user has multiple groups programmed into their radio & selects to make a call to a different group to their own, if they forget to change back to their own group it will not matter as the radio will always receive calls from their own group, no matter where the group selector is set. This is the same for an ‘all call’ which will collect up all radios from any group selected or being monitored. This also manages the ability for radios to be members of multiple groups.
To Summarise
Capacity Plus will enhance the radio system operation by allowing multiple groups to be used over a smaller number of channels. The channels are a pooled resource for calls & thus provide a far more efficient way of utilising the channels available. It is therefore possible to easily add groups to your radio system & for each of these groups to operate independently.
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