IRAS PRO_Navy product description
Voice communication training for naval simulators
IRAS PRO_Navy provides a dedicated communication training solution for your ship teams in exercises with your naval tactical simulator. With a touch screen operated radio communication panel and external push-to-talk button the team gets a realistic experience for their communication tasks. For the exercise instructors the IRAS PRO_Navy solution provides means affecting the communication as well as guidance and monitoring capabilities.
IRAS PRO_Navy is a radio communication solution intended for military or civil naval simulators capable of providing ship positions in DIS format. The system supports both multiple ships, multiple exercises and multiple instructors in almost any combination. It allows for up to 60 radio channels per exercise and dedicated intercom for teams, instructors and between teams and instructors. It runs on affordable PC equipment with standard PC headset or speakers/microphone as recommended in the hardware section. It has been designed and developed in close cooperation with the Danish Navy and is currently deployed in the Danish Naval Warfare School as well as abroad.
Voice communication setup
The set up of exercises is performed by one or more instructors each having a dedicated instructor station. The instructor defines a set of channels with names and frequencies and decides which own ships should have access to which channels. A channel can also be defined as being secure, in which case the transmission will be preceded by a beep sound simulating a crypto. Each instructor can enter a description/name for him/her in the exercise, which will be visible by the teams when requesting instructor-team intercom. In order to adjust the training level the instructors can limit the range of the radios in the different frequency ranges. With increasing range between ships the communication will become more noisy. With a distance between ships below the Max Range value, the communication will be clear. For a distance between the ships larger than Max Range and below Cut-Off Range the communication will be noisy with increasing levels of noise with increasing distance. When the Cut-Off Range is surpassed the communication will stop.
Voice communication management
During an exercise, the instructor can monitor activities on the communication system. The instructor can also participate in the radio communication if he/she likes.
The picture above shows Voice Comm Monitor, the monitoring and communication panel used by the instructor. The left section shows an overview of the communication activity in the system by the teams. Green indicators indicate a ship receiving a signal, yellow indicators show assigned radios/channels to ships and blue indicates a transmitting ship. In the right section the instructor configures his/her own communication and spoofing needs. A channel can be listened to in only one side/speaker/ear at a time. The instructor can listen to up to 15 channels and transmit on a single channel at a time. In the lower section the intercom to teams and between instructors is controlled.
In the example in the above picture shows the following situation: The instructor transmits on channel CHAN 01 which is received by ships 1 and 2. Ship 2 transmits on channel CHAN 03 which is received by the instructor and ship 1.
The above picture shows the Voice Spoofing window. From here the instructor can record, edit (using an external application) and replay voice communication. Up to five files can be prepared for spoofing and played by pressing the respective Play button. The channels for recording and playback are selected in the Voice Comm Monitor window.
The Voice Comm Log window shows the instructor the communication history in chronological order.
IRAS PRO_Navy allows the instructor act as a ship in the exercise. In this case, the instructors communication follows the same radio signal propagation conditions as for the ship-teams. The Instructor Entity window allows the instructor to enter the desired ship number to act as and see ships chosen by other instructors.
The radio communication panel
The teams use the communication panel for IRAS PRO_Navy for operating the communication station. The communication panel is designed to be used with a touch screen and an external push-to-talk (PTT) switch. On the communication panel the operator chooses how to lay out the available radio channels and selects any number of channels for reception. Own ship intercom (called Cubicle Intercom) is also available. This allows for communication within a single ship. Even though multiple intercom channels are available, only one can be selected at a time. The same goes for the instructor intercom. Only one channel at a time can be chosen for transmission. When a radio channel is selected, activating the PTT will initiate a half-duplex radio transmission. Only radios with a matching frequency can receive the transmission. Activating the PTT when an intercom channel is selected will start a full-duplex intercom transmission receivable only by the specific instructor or by the own ship intercom with the same channel number.
The figure above shows a radio panel with three radio channels, all selected for reception, an instructor intercom channel (to INSTRUCTOR 3) and an own ship intercom (INTERCOM 4). The radio channel CHAN 03 is selected for transmission but no transmission is ongoing (no PTT). Every channel has two indicators, the upper for listening and the lower for transmitting. The indicators show the current communication activity on the channel. The green indicator in the picture indicates reception on CHAN 01.
All channels placed in the left side of the communication panel will be played back on the left side of the headset or the left speaker and likewise channels placed on the right side will be played back on the right side of the headset or the right speaker.
For each channel the volume can be adjusted independently.
Available PTT options
PTT to initiate a transmission can be provided in different ways:
- Food pedal
- Hand mike
- Tabletop microphone with PTT switch
