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So that you don’t come back down to earth with a bump... ATIS helps Thales Norway to provide long-term aviation safety The Customer The Challenge Thales is an international electronics group operating in the defence, aerospace and security technology market. The company pursues a major goal in the development of military and civilian technology in parallel, namely the safety and security of people, property and nations. The group employs 68,000 people in 50 countries around the world. Thales Norway, the Norwegian subsidiary, has supplied the Norwegian armed forces and NATO with communications and security solutions for 50 years. Over the years, the company has developed into a specialist for turnkey systems solutions based on multi-functional concepts. In the past ten years Thales has gained a leading position as a supplier of voice communication systems (VCS) for air traffic management in the civilian sector. These VCS solutions combine state-of-the-art IP technology with the exacting requirements for high availability and safety in this sensitive area The activities of Thales Norway include development of specialised VCS solutions for the air traffic control market place. In addition to ensuring trouble-free communication between air traffic controllers and pilots, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) requires that such systems are also able to record and store all conversations. Moreover, it must also be possible to capture the exact time of contact. This is the only way of ensuring transparent documentation in international air transportation. Particular importance is attached to this regulation since such recordings may also be used to examine air traffic controllers’ statements and to clarify disputed facts in a court of law. The Initial Situation The basic component of the Thales system is the IP VCS ACEcom solution, which is recognised as the market-leader and which was selected for NATO’s ACCS programme. However, it does not have any function to record and time-stamp conversations. Owing to the decentralised architecture of the ACEcom radio system there is no one central point within the network which can be used to acquire the recording data passively using sniffing. A particular challenge in this context are group calls. For this reason a solution was required that allows for the recording and accurate documentation of individual calls and multicast streams. VC-MDx Recorder Active activation VDS VC-MDx recorder PBX Passive activation Ethernet VDS configuration The ATIS Solution Trouble-free call recording could be ensured by making use of the tried and tested VC-MDx recorder from ATIS. The recently developed VoIP Decoding System (VDS) serves as the interface to the VCS. ATIS has developed this middleware specifically for the exchange of data between a VoIP-based communications network and the VC-MDx recording system. In this process, the VDS captures the VoIP communication data, converts them to an ATIS-specific format and transfers the audio signals to the MDx recorder together with the relevant call data. In the case described, the VDS was configured in such a way that it cuts into the group calls in order to capture the audio signals originating at the radio interfaces. This allows all the necessary data to be documented from the network infrastructure. The audio signals originating with the operator are actively transferred to the recorder using the network protocol RTP (real-time transport protocol). To ensure direct reception of this data the MDx is equipped with an RTP port. All recording channels can be monitored online by any operator. The ACEcom radio solution can also be implemented as a redundant system in order to further increase security. It is thus possible to transport the same data over two separate networks. A VC-MDx recorder is attached to both networks in order to record the data (dual homing). However, the data is only stored once even when both networks are active. Moreover, this option also allows different call contents to be recorded by the VC-MDx simultaneously. VC-MDx enables online monitoring of up to 30 channels per recorder; this is also possible via a web interface. In order to guarantee the reproduction of whole group discussions permissible in a court of law, group calls with up to 8 participants can be replayed simultaneously. ATIS systems GmbH | [email protected] | www.atis-systems.com