General Electric Company

Nancy L Hall

David L Hattey

Jeffrey S Childress

Houston H Hughes, Iii

A trunked radio frequency (RF) repeater system for public service trunking (PST) or the like includes a fault detection system having an RF output power monitoring, over-the-air RF monitoring and other repeater transceiver testing capabilities. An over-the-air monitor continually tests the digital signalling transmitted by different transceivers within the repeater system. The site controller automatically removes transceivers that test faulty, and does not permit tested faulty transceivers to go back on line until they have passed poll response, power output and RF digital signalling tests.

Radio trunking fault detection system with power output monitoring and

A digital radio RF signalling protocol communicates either digitized voice or digital data signals and indicates the type of information being communicated to the receiver. Multiple repeats of control signals are provided for face protection and to ensure correct receipt even under adverse communications channel conditions. When the destination transceiver receives a transmitted digital data burst from the transmitter, the destination transceiver transmits a responsive acknowledge message and may specify in the acknowledge message which portions of the received message were received incorrectly and should be retransmitted by the originating transceiver. The originating transceiver determines the contents of subsequently-transmitted data burst based upon the information it receives from the destination transceiver by way of the acknowledge message. As deleterious phenomena (e.g., noise and/or fading) degrade communcations channel quality, the acknowledge message handshaking causes the originating transceiver to repeat incorrectly received data packets until the destination transceiver finally receives those data packets correctly.

Apparatus and method for transmitting digital data over a radio

A radio frequency repeater system includes a independent error detection units which detect redundant and overlapping error conditions of the RF repeater stations. The error detection units notify the site controller and/or a system manager of the error conditions, and the failed repeater stations are removed from active service. The error detection units are then used to simulate actual service for the failed stations so that the stations can be placed back into service once they being operating properly again. Because the error detection units operate independently of the other components in the repeater system they can be used to trigger failure recovery mechanisms without becoming ineffective due to failure of other components.

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Lynchburg, VA, United States of America

Nancy L Hall