EID unveils new TWH-104 personal role radio during this year’s Eurosatory exhibition in Paris
Following on from the company’s successful TWH-101 Personal Role Radio (PRR) in service with a number of armies in Europe, Latin America and Africa, EID used the opportunity of the Eurosatory exhibition being held in Paris between 11 June and 15 June to launch its new TWH-104G1/G3 PRR family.
The company told MONch that these new Ultra High Frequency (UHF: 300 megahertz to three gigahertz) radios offer a number of hardware and software improvements on legacy the legacy TWH-101 including the provision of a Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna, and a blue force tracking function. The new radios also include an optimised Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) which allows the simultaneous carriage of voice, data and GPS information, with a typical data throughput of circa 96 kilobits-per-second, company officials disclosed. This enhanced SRW can be retrofitted onto the legacy TWH-101 radios, sans GPS as these radios do not include a GPS receiver.
Compared to the legacy TWH-101 transceivers, the new radios have double the range of the TWH-101 enabling communications up to two kilometres’ (1.2 miles) range, although the TWH-104 has a retransmit function with traffic able to skip across four transceivers, potentially giving a TWH-104 network a range of up to eight kilometres (4.3 miles) with the network accommodating up to 64 participants. In terms of customers, EID told MONch that it has delivered TWH-104s to the Portuguese Air Force’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) whom have deployed to Mali to support French-led coalition combat operations against militant Islamist groups active in the Sahel region of southern Africa. Additional deliveries will follow to the Portuguese Army and Portuguese Navy SOF, although likely timelines to this end remain vague as they are dependent on available budgets.
Writ large, EID has performed software enhancements for its ICC-201 Very High Frequency (30MHz to 300MHz) and UHF man-pack with the addition of a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) function. This enables smartphone users whom have the Softphone software application installed on their handsets to communicate with the ICC-201 using the SIP VOIP protocol. In turn, this can allow smartphone users to communicate with TWH-104 users via the SIP VOIP protocol which is carried by this transceiver, via the ICC-201. The company states that this should be particularly useful in situations where armed forces and civilian authorities may have to communicate with one another, for example, when responding to a terrorist incident or in HADR (Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief) situations. The firm added that, to date, this VOIP function is in service with the ICC-201 transceivers of eleven nations.
Thomas Withington
