“Modern military thinking is all about speed and accuracy,” says ATDI managing director Cyprien de Cosson, “and PnC is the epitome of that. It puts vital information immediately into the place where it is most needed.”

PnC predicts tactical radio coverage, showing where base station signals can reach portable devices in both urban and rural environments, as well as planning point-to-point links for communications in hilly environments. In addition, it predicts airspace coverage from ground control systems to mountainous regions and optical coverage to determine areas of visibility.

“All this is achieved on the ground,” Cyprien notes. “That, plus our flexible, easy-to-use interface, gives real power to people having to make plans in real time.”

PnC was designed in consultation with military planners to ensure it most closely meets the needs of the people using it.

For more information visit our product page.

How to use ICS manager to register and manage spectrum/block licences
What constitutes a spectrum/block licence
How blocks are input into ICS manager
Assigning spectrum/blocks to customers
Licensing customers
Date: Wednesday 20 June
Time: 10 AM GMT
Venue: Online

For more information or to register for this event please contact: sarah.sasson@atdi.co.uk

ATDI is collaborating with Tampnet which has a 2500km large network of fibre optic cables and fixed radio links linking North Sea rigs to each other and to five landing points on shore. The new project involves connecting the support vessels and platforms via the fibre links and a wireless broadband coverage area around selected fixed assets. Tampnet has asked ATDI to plan and model the proposed service and to negotiate a test and development licence with UK regulator Ofcom.

“It’s an interesting challenge,” comments ATDI Managing Director Cyprien de Cosson. “The North Sea is where British and Norwegian regulation and signals meet so there is a large degree of judicious preparation required to make sure there are no international inference issues – particularly as we are dealing with vessels that cross the political boundaries at will.”

Cyprien notes the advantages of terrestrial broadband over the satellite systems. “While satellites can provide coverage anywhere, the limited bandwidth and relatively long delays will be limiting,” he says. “And, while high throughput, low latency and jitter may not matter in many working environments, when you are dealing with oil and gas under pressure and trying to do it in a force 10 gale, it becomes a lot more significant.”

ATDI and Tampnet intend that the test and development licence can be upgraded to a permanent one once systems have been assessed. “A permanent licence will involve spectrum sharing and that is ATDI’s forte,” Cyprien comments.

For more information contact: cyprien.de.cosson@atdi.co.uk

There remains no consensus on how close a turbine can be to a base station before it becomes a potential concern and there continues to be debate on whether aging official guideline documents on the issue remain relevant. 

“There’s no consensus but there are a lot of misconceptions,” says ATDI operations director Peter Paul. “That can put a lot more emotion into the discussions on where wind farms are sited than there really ought to be.”

ATDI has been walking this tightrope in respect of a proposed development by a company in the west of England. The firm wants to build a wind farm in proximity to a base station belonging to a radiocommunications network but the network company is objecting on the grounds of potential interference caused by the tips of the turbine rotors.

“Proximity is a key word,” Peter notes. “If you give a network operator a choice, it wouldn’t have a wind farm within 10 kilometres of any of its facilities. But, clearly, that’s not a viable position so our job is to establish just how close a turbine can be and not be a problem.”

That is an increasing pressure. Energy ministers from 23 countries arrived in London on April 26 to look at how they can encourage the greater production of green energy. Prime Minister David Cameron told them: “The world urgently needs a more diverse, cleaner mix of energy sources that will give us security without causing irreparable damage to the planet.”

Peter says: “There will only ever be more wind farms, not less, so the issue of how to make them coexist with radio services will become an increasingly thorny one. ATDI has accumulated significant expertise in 15 years of dealing with potential interference caused by turbines and I’m pleased developers talk to us before beginning any construction. It’s a lot cheaper to move something on a plan than on the ground.”

For more information about ATDI’s products and services contact: enquiries@atdi.co.uk

“They both behave with a certain probability,” says former ATDI managing director John Berry, “You can test both of them and predict outcomes and, if treated right, they’ll both do a great job for you.”

John moved away from the world of engineering and into the realm of human resources when he set up TimelessTime with his wife, Sue. Known for his enthusiasm for staff development while at ATDI, he notes: “There wasn’t really a light bulb moment. I have always believed in striving for excellence in people management. TimelessTime is simply a concentration of that belief.”

Based in the Sussex countryside, the company’s founding principle is that educating, performance managing and supporting staff has a direct and measurable impact on profits. “Small firms are generally not getting as much out of their staff as they can and there’s a huge amount of untapped potential in people. My job now is to show companies how to exploit that.”

Sue is a long-standing HR professional and John, determined to bring something to TimelessTime that complements her skills, signed up for a masters degree in occupational psychology – and exams now loom. “I see it as putting my beliefs into practice,” he says.

Can you think of any more?

ATDI is keen to add to this list. Send all suggestions to sarah.sasson@atdi.co.uk

Podcast – shelled peas

Internet – where Yorkshire fishermen keep their catch

Digital switchover – manually changing the channel on the telly

Digital dividend – being paid to manually change the channel

USB – “bus” written while drunk

Hard drive – a long time in traffic

Java – just a place in Indonesia

Cloud storage provider  –  the sky

Netbook – where trawlermen browse for new equipment

Fibre optic – all the brown rice you can see

External storage – a shed

MP3 – not the first two members of parliament

iPad – “paid” written while drunk

Downloads – not very happy for much of the time

27-inch monitor – a very small prefect

 Can you think of any more?

ATDI is keen to add to this list. Send all suggestions to sarah.sasson@atdi.co.uk

This latest release enables the user produce clutter files compatible with ICS telecom utilising the on-line CORINE dataset (European Economic Area). This dataset is freely available for download from the Global Mapper website. A copy of Global Mapper 13.01 is required to access online data, but older versions of the software utilise a file based copy of the CORINE dataset.

The Corine land cover 2000 was finalised in the early 1990s as part of the European Commission’s programme to CooRdinate Information on the Environment and is freely available via http://www.bluemarblegeo.com/global-mapper/product/download_complete.php

It’s tough running a charity. There’s lots of difficult things you need to do to deliver your service – and that couldn’t be more true than for the lifeboats people – plus there’s the constant challenge of misperception.

In my experience, every charity suffers from the same groundless urban myth. That is, folks believe that only a small proportion of what they might donate to a charity actually gets to the end cause. This conveniently ignores the facts that people wouldn’t volunteer their time and energy to a charity where this was the case, and it pretends that independent auditors and the Charity Commission don’t go through each charity’s accounts with the close scrutiny of a man searching the bathroom floor for his lost contact lens.

It’s a shame that some folks are more influenced by unverified nonsense from a bloke in the pub than the somewhat more illuminating figures in a charity’s accounts (which can be readily accessed online if anybody ever feels the truth is actually worth knowing).

Anyway, ATDI salutes RNLI (see – bad hand at Scrabble) in its efforts to reduce its overheads – and, in particular, its radio network costs – and has been privileged to be part of the process.

Jeff Clark-Meads
PR guru and Author

Which begs the question of, should you ever feel the need for a vibrating tattoo, where you would place it.

I am open to be persuaded of the benefits of this device, but I can see some drawbacks. For instance, how would you ever duck a call? Show me a professional who doesn’t have colleagues/suppliers/customers who he would prefer not to talk to and I’ll show you somebody who is in his first ten minutes of his first day at work. We’ve all ignored a ringing phone at some point in our careers – and it’s a lot easier to disregard something that’s ringing on the other side of the office than something that’s ringing in a more intimate place.

And what about those thick-skinned monsters at the telephone marketing companies? They could make your buttock/back/bicep vibrate all through your bath/concert/evening at the cinema with their efforts to sell you a kitchen. Hmm, never thought there could be a way for these people to be more irritating but Nokia seem to have provided them with one.

Oh, and let’s not even contemplate wrong numbers. They’ve always been a pain in the, er, neck. At least now you can choose what part of your body you want them to be a pain in.

You know, looking at all these down sides, I think I prefer a phone that just rings. Anybody planning on patenting one of those?