Download Thales Norway

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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