SUNNYVALE, Calif.-Trimble Navigation Ltd. and L.M. Ericsson have agreed to license technology that allows dispatch centers such as ambulance and other public-safety services to use radio bandwidth more efficiently in tracking their vehicles.
Trimble said it will offer Automatic Vehicle Location and data messaging products that are compatible with Ericsson’s Enhanced Digital Access Communication System radio network.
The Placer family of Trimble GPS receivers and the Star View family of tracking display software will incorporate Ericsson’s proprietary Radio Data Interface, allowing direct plug-and-play connection to both new and existing Ericsson radio networks without the need for custom hardware or software integration.
“The ability to incorporate AVL into a true voice or data trunking architecture allows agencies to use radio bandwidth allocation more efficiently as well as obtain real-time vehicle location information, thereby enhancing decision-making in the dispatch center,” said Tom Ellis, Trimble vice president of tracking products.
The EDACS trunked radio architecture enables voice and data messages to share the same set of frequencies. Customers therefore do not need dedicated radio channels to process their AVL data to display vehicle and incident locations. In addition, public-safety agencies are able to integrate the Trimble/Ericsson system with their Computer Aided Dispatch software.
