Another Way of Thinking About Digital

For nearly a century, police, fire and other emergency responders have used powerful analog radios to deliver mobile communications over large coverage areas. These systems have worked well for communications between dispatch/command centers and field personnel within range. However, in cases where a first responder is inside a building, access to an RF signal often is limited or non-existent, which makes such systems less reliable or even useless. In the former case, voice communications are garbled and must be repeated, sometimes over and over. In the latter case, the radios simply fail to key up.

In such circumstances, would digital communications technology be superior to analog? In order to answer that question, let’s investigate the strengths and weaknesses of each technology.

See the full article here: Using serial bridging to connect public-safety radio, smartphones – Urgent Communications article.