Belgium Nationwide Public Safety Upgrade 

28/07/21

STI Engineering has supplied a total of 189 high-powered VHF paging transmitters to Belgium as part of the ASTRID nationwide public safety upgrade. Stage one of the system refresh commenced in 2015, with an additional 89 sites upgraded in 2021.

STI Engineering was chosen as the supplier for the network upgrade after a thorough investigation of the company and the available transmitters on the market. As a staged upgrade, the transmitters – whilst on a modern platform – had to be backwards compatible with the legacy transmitters in the network.

The ASTRID system enables police, fire services, emergency medical services and other organisations involved in public safety to improve both internal and interdisciplinary communications. By establishing a reliable and transparent link between users, ASTRID aims to promote the smooth running of operations and the safety of users in the field and thus contribute to the safety and protection of the Belgian population.

The digital paging system enables users to quickly and securely transmit messages to recipients located within Belgium. Belgian fire brigades, working largely with volunteers, the civil defense service and various medical services rely on ASTRID’s paging network to call upon their staff in the event of an incident.

The initial contract in 2015 depended on STI undertaking development and manufacturing process changes to comply with all European directives, including CE marking and RoHS. The transmitters were delivered ahead of schedule for stage one in 2015, with stage two delivered Q1 2021.

The RFI-148 250W paging transmitters offer class-leading usability and diagnostics with integrated isolator for VSWR measurements, SNMP diagnostics, remote firmware upgrade capability and off-air decoding port for message confirmation by external receiver/decoder. The industry-leading MTBF will ensure high availability, reliability and longevity for the paging system.

Since its release in 2014, more than 2,000 RFI-148 transmitters have been deployed worldwide. The unit has become the default choice for mission-critical messaging, particularly in wide-area simulcast networks.

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