Rohde & Schwarz has been selected by British air traffic service provider National Air Traffic Services (NATS) to supply and install its VCS-4G voice communications system for the London City Airport digital tower project.
The fully IP-based VCS-4G system has been installed at Swanwick control center as part of the digital tower operations project, which is due to go into operation in 2019.
Digital tower solutions allow control of airports for reasons of resource optimization or geographic backup. Due to the full IP system architecture and distributed infrastructure, Rohde & Schwarz’s VCS-4G voice communications system supports shared access to remote radio and telephony resources.
These features allow towers to be remotely operated from another geographic location. Such VCS installations make it possible to control airports without having a complete air traffic control (ATC) crew present at the actual location.
Rohde & Schwarz has been working in partnership with NATS to get the VCS systems installed at Swanwick area control centre (ACC) in the new designated London City Airport (LCY) digital control room. The system will interface with existing analog radio equipment located at LCY with the use of Rohde & Schwarz radio gateways which convert VoIP-based communications signals for call control and media information to conventional analog signals, and vice versa.
The system supports both ground-ground and ground-air-ground communications to provide all the voice communication tools to the air traffic controllers. NATS also has selected the Rohde & Schwarz VCS-4G IP-based voice communications system as its second voice system for its ATC communications in UK airspace.
