Aurora making strides to tone down radio interference
Aurora is making progress on removing sources of interference that have caused communication problems since public safety employees switched to a new radio system late last year.
Police and firefighters needing to communicate near Phillips Park on the city's southeast side now should experience less interference on their radios, said Ted Beck, Aurora's Chief Technology Officer.
The city's technology staff, working with a consulting firm, discovered equipment on top of a Naperville business was disrupting a frequency based at a tower in the park.
The interference was so intense the frequency could not be used, Beck said. The digital radio system functions on more than one frequency, but only one was available near Phillips Park, diminishing the ability to communicate in that area.
“The company was very accommodating in terms of letting us power down the equipment on their rooftop to determine what was causing the interference,” Beck said. “Now we're able to use the frequency that we had disabled due to interference.”
The city now is working with the consulting firm and the manufacturer of the radio system, Florida-based Harris Corp., to solve interference issues at four other areas in the city.
“We have a couple areas of town that we want to enhance coverage,” Beck said.
Police, firefighters, public works crews and other employees in Aurora and Naperville began using the Harris OpenSky radio system Dec. 1. But it malfunctioned 790 times in both cities during its first four months in use, according to reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Beck said he and his technology staff have met with police and fire leaders to prioritize which of Aurora's four remaining trouble areas to address first.
The city soon will receive equipment to analyze sources of interference without the consulting firm's help. The equipment's price is included in the $14 million Aurora spent on purchasing the new system, Beck said.
“We are procuring equipment that will be part of our system permanently going forward,” Beck said. “(It) will help us identify interference and capture the data that's necessary so that we can deal with this kind of thing in a faster and more effective way.”
Continued work on improving the system is welcomed by radio users, who say some glitches have been fixed, but others remain.
“In some regards, it's better and in some regards it's not because there are still certain areas and certain buildings where it doesn't work,” said Dave Schmidt, president of Aurora's police patrol officers union.
But in a city as sprawling as Aurora, having only four trouble spots nine months after switching to a new system is not too bad, Beck said.
“Any system of this magnitude is constant work,” he said. “It's the nature of the beast.”