An air terminal requires a full control of the activities for a seamless operation. The coordination and continuity of all tasks is necessary to provide an excellent service to the users of the facility, and key to ensure critical issues such as the security of operations. Specifically, in the Barcelona Airport, the Low Visibility Proceedings (LVP) stand out, among other protocols, to ensure a correct operation of the aircrafts and the ground staff for maneuvering and platforms, even against harsh visibility conditions due to weather– night, fog, rain… – or other events –smoke from a fire.
The problem
The Barcelona Airport has a protocol that, if incorrectly implemented, may involve very negative consequences. As starting point, its operation requires full automation and ruggedness. The LVP system works as a set of correlative operations whose goal is to deliver an alert to the operators in the facility. Once detected from the Control Center, a reduced visibility scenario launches the order automatically so 17 panels placed in different points of the terminal turns on a light signal which will alert the staff that the LVP mode has been enabled, so the predefined protocols must be applied. But, how should be established the communication between the Barcelona Airport Control Center and the 17 devices warning the LVP protocol?
The solution
Thanks of the ruggedness of the TETRA communications network. According to Josep Rodrigo, Application Consultant at Logitek, “Beyond the usual voice communication features of the TETRA network, the Barcelona Airport uses this network to command its LVP devices to enable the reduced visibility protocol in the facilities.” The use of the LKtetra Router technology for communication and monitoring of these devices is an innovating proposal to manage big public facilities: the security and reliability of the TETRA network allow a new control and monitoring architecture to be implemented with the highest assurance.
The implementation of LKtetra devices as a communication technology between each panel placed in the service road of the Terminal and the Control Center has enabled the Airport to have a new high-availability, rugged communication architecture which requires an alert management critical process that reduces significantly the implementation costs since it uses an existing network.