Client Success Story: Mission Critical Partners guides radio system upgrade for university police department

Carnegie Mellon University is a leading research institution located in Pittsburgh. It was formed in 1967 by the merger of Carnegie Technical Institute — founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1900 — and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, which was founded in 1913 by brothers Andrew and Richard Mellon, who also were industrialists as well as bankers. Today Carnegie Mellon consists of seven colleges and has a student population of more than 16,000. Its faculty and alumni include 20 Nobel Prize laureates.

The university’s police department — which consists of police officers, security officers, and 911 telecommunicators — responds to about 13,000 calls for service annually. The department had been using a conventional analog land mobile radio (LMR) system operating on the ultra-high frequency (UHF) band to communicate with field personnel in patrol cars, on bikes and motorcycles, and on foot.

The system had started to experience coverage issues, particularly in terms of in-building coverage. The Carnegie Mellon campus is densely populated, with several classroom buildings and the student union, which are heavily traveled, having one or more subterranean levels. This environment made it challenging for department personnel to connect with the legacy LMR system, which is a bad outcome during an emergency. Another factor is that one of the receiver sites was lost when the dormitory where it existed was torn down, which put a crimp in the system’s coverage.

“We were operating one site short, which contributed to the coverage issue we were experiencing,” says police chief Aaron Lauth. “It never got reinstalled on the new building.” Even if it had, it wouldn’t have been operational because no one knew where the site’s repeater went. “We eventually found it in a storage room in the police department,” Lauth says.

That the system was analog also created challenges. Analog signals steadily degrade the closer one gets to the edge of the coverage footprint. This came into play whenever the department transported arrestees to the Allegheny County Jail, which is several miles from campus, or when personnel had to visit off-campus facilities owned by the university.

Yet another challenge was that Allegheny County is in the process of upgrading its LMR system, with the city of Pittsburgh designated as a zone on the new system. The county is migrating to a Project 25 (P25) digital trunked system with encryption. Because the university is in Pittsburgh, its police department and the city’s often respond jointly to incidents that occur on campus. Consequently, the university will lose communications interoperability with the city’s emergency-response agencies, including the police department, if it continues to operate on its legacy LMR system.

Lauth told a story that illustrates the interoperability problem that his department was experiencing and its impact. Two high schools are adjacent to the Carnegie-Mellon campus. In Fall 2022, a 911 call was received that indicated an active-shooter incident was unfolding at one of them. Because of the university’s proximity, Carnegie-Mellon officers were first to arrive.

“But obviously, given the nature of the call, the cavalry is coming — city of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County police and sheriff, and the Pennsylvania State Police,” Lauth says. However, Carnegie-Mellon’s officers quickly realized that this most likely was not an active-shooter event, but rather that they might be looking at a swatting situation. “But we had communication issues as we worked through that incident because we didn’t have the interoperability that we needed,” Lauth says. Specifically, Pittsburgh police officers use a tactical channel for critical incidents that now is encrypted, which prevented university officers from using it.

The lack of interoperability would have been much more egregious if the incident had involved an active shooter. “This incident underscored our need for a true analysis of our current capabilities and where we needed to go moving forward,” Lauth says.

Consequently, the department hired MCP to comprehensively assess the system and recommend how these challenges could be resolved. It was an easy decision, Lauth says. Not only has MCP earned a stellar reputation in the public-safety sector since its inception in 2009, but Lauth had a previous working relationship with Steve Haberman, an MCP senior project manager, who at the time was a telecommunications supervisor for a 911 center that served Lauth’s law-enforcement agency.

“I have a technology background, but I didn’t know enough to determine what was wrong with our radio system, only that it was not public-safety grade, and it was having a negative impact on our operations,” Lauth says. “However, I did know who to call to fix it.”

What MCP Did

Starting in summer 2023, MCP subject-matter experts (SME) conducted an overall assessment of the system as well as coverage testing. They also assessed the consoles used in the department’s 911 center and the distributed antenna systems (DAS) and bidirectional amplifiers (BDA) that are in place in numerous campus structures to improve in-building coverage. In doing so, they leveraged the firm’s proprietary Model for Advancing Public Safety® (MAPS®) methodology, which leverages the collective expertise of the firm’s 200-plus SMEs, industry standards and best practices, and accreditation programs.

After the assessments, the SMEs made numerous recommendations based on the findings and then provided guidance pertaining to multiple improvements that the department is pursuing.

“I was able to use that report and use it to acquire the capital-improvement funding that we needed to modernize the radio system,” Lauth says.

Results

MCP recommended that the Carnegie Mellon Police Department replace its legacy LMR system with a P25-compliant digital simulcast system with encryption. Moving to a P25 system ensure native interoperability with city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County emergency-response agencies notably the police department and sheriff’s office; this is particularly important as it relates to the police department given the large number of joint responses that occur each year. Native interoperability is preferred compared with interoperability through patches or interfaces, because the latter approaches are time-consuming and every second matters during an emergency.

In addition, digital LMR systems provide stronger and clearer voice communications to the edge of the coverage footprint. In contrast, the voice quality provided by analog systems gradually degrades as the user moves closer to the edge.

A simulcast approach was recommended because such systems transmit the same communications from multiple towers simultaneously using the same frequencies, which typically improves coverage in areas that have dense populations or a high concentration of buildings — like the university’s campus. A trunking system was not recommended because the police department doesn’t have enough system users to justify the cost, and because a simulcast system will deliver sufficient capacity give the number of users. (Capacity refers to the ability of a user to connect to the system at any time or place without experiencing a busy signal.)

MCP’s SMEs developed the system design, which calls for three transmit/receive sites and two receive-only sites. The design will extend the coverage footprint so that personnel do not lose communications when transporting arrestees to the county jail or visiting university facilities that are off the main campus. It also will ensure the ability to communicate all the way to the edge of the coverage footprint.

The assessment of the console systems used in the 911 center revealed that they had reached end of life and no longer were receiving vendor support — consequently the recommendation was to replace them.

The assessment of the DAS/BDA infrastructure, which was mandated by the Pittsburgh Fire Department, revealed a serious design flaw — none of the police frequencies were programmed into the devices, which means that the infrastructure is essentially useless to any police officer having to enter campus buildings, particularly on subterranean levels. Another problem, according to Lauth, was that the BDAs weren’t networked.

“Because of that, they not only weren’t communicating with each other, they also started to conflict with each other,” Lauth says.

MCP’s recommendation was that all current devices and all devices implemented in new constructions, be programmed with the police frequencies. The firm also recommended that the university consider implementing a core DAS/BDA system. Such a core would consist of donor radios programmed with all applicable frequencies; it would transmit radio signals via fiber-optic cable owned by the university to relevant buildings; once received, each building’s DAS/BDA infrastructure would boost the signals and transmit them to police, fire, and emergency medical personnel working inside.

Benefits

The primary benefit of this project is improved police officer safety because they will have stronger and clearer communications to the edge of the coverage footprint, regardless of whether they are in vehicles, in buildings, or on foot, bicycle, or motorcycle patrol. They also will have encrypted communications and enhanced interoperability with neighboring jurisdictions, which is a big plus given the large number of joint responses that occur each year.

“MCP’s knowledge of the technologies is outstanding and way beyond mine,” Lauth says. “But what I think I like best is that they take the time, and have the ability, to explain what’s needed in a way that I can grasp, without dumbing it down.”

Lauth also praised MCP’s boots-on-the-ground approach to the assessment.

“They didn’t just rely on video conferencing,” Lauth says. “They were on campus, and they got into every nook and cranny of every building to determine the best sites for the antennas, to maximize coverage, as well as the placement of the rest of the equipment. I appreciate that they were on site, which really enabled them to appreciate what we’re dealing with here.”