The hospital, which is operated by the Burton Hospitals NHS Foundations Trust, uses two way radios for all staff, with the main users being porters and the estates department. The hospital contacted Brentwood (the company that installed the Capacity Plus system) because its staff, especially those who work across the whole site, needed a larger network that would allow them to use their radios on the move across a larger area.
Capacity Plus is a piece of trunking software which increases the number of individual radios able to operate on a system simultaneously without purchasing licenses for extra frequencies, while Linked Capacity Plus uses digital repeater units in different locations to effectively create extended two-way radio networks from smaller individual ones. Brentwood Communications recommended the latter and the Trust’s management agreed to its proposals.
The company then installed Motorola SLR5500 Repeaters in four locations – two in the hospital main building, one in the basement, and one in the treatment centre. Once configured with the Linked Capacity Plus software, these four repeaters were joined together to create one large network spanning the core areas of the hospital.
Prior to the upgrade, the Queen’s Hospital operated a fleet of Motorola DP3601 digital handheld radios and Brentwood introduced a new fleet of Motorola DP4800e digital handsets. The DP4800e is Motorola Solutions’ flagship digital model and has a wide range of in-built safety alert, data connection and communication functions. The company also set up the existing fleet of DP3601 handsets to work on the Linked Capacity Plus System.
