04 January 2024
GIRN (Government Integrated Radio Network), the national TETRA network that ensures public safety in Malaysia, covers capital city Kuala Lumpur, its metropolitan area, and the nearby regions. More than 7 million people are covered by GRIN, and 14 public safety agencies make use of the network.
Sapura is the concessionaire of the network, managing and operating the infrastructure. The company decided to enlarge the existing system by adding another, taking advantage of the latest standards and enhancements in TETRA technology to provide improved service as well as greater coverage. Sapura identified Teltronic’s NEBULA TETRA system as the best solution for deploying a new, cutting-edge infrastructure with the latest and most advanced functionalities.
Network extension with full interconnectivity
As well as expanding GIRN’s existing system with another new TETRA infrastructure, the new system had to offer the highest reliability and availability, as well as incorporate the most advanced TETRA services, especially communications security.
With Teltronic’s NEBULA infrastructure, the GIRN network would be composed by two TETRA infrastructures from two different manufacturers for providing the public safety agencies with communication services. Both networks had to work as a single system, ensuring voice and data communications in a normal and transparent manner. Any user, regardless of in which network connected, had to be able to communicate with any other user of either network without any changes in their operational schemes.
CISIS to integrate services between infrastructures
Teltronic designed and developed a new network component ‘CISIS’ that operates as the interface between TETRA systems, allowing connecting NEBULA with another TETRA network from a different manufacturer.
NEBULA connects with the CISIS over Ethernet/IP. The pre-existing TETRA system connects with the CISIS by air interface, the common standardized language for all TETRA equipment. The user perception with the infrastructures interconnected in this manner is that the systems appear as only one network in which services such as individual calls, group calls, SDS and status messages, terminal authentication, group management, end-to-end encryption, priority calls, and DGNA management are guaranteed regardless of which network users are connected.
With 273 site base stations distributed in five network segments, the new infrastructure offers new functionalities and enhancements for the daily communications operations of public safety personnel. For example, the TETRA air interface encryption has been upgraded from Class 2 to Class 3, and redundancy in elements such as central nodes allow achieving nearly 100% system availability. The backhaul network is based on Ethernet/IP, replacing the previous E1 links. As the NEBULA system design is 100% IP-based, the new network deployment was carried out quickly and with great efficiency.
New framework for public safety
The new TETRA system has elevated the public safety agencies’ communications to a new level of reliability, availability, and functionality. Operations can rely on a latest-generation network offering the most advanced TETRA services.
