Friday fragments - comms news from around the web for 15 August 2014

A round-up of the week's critical communications and public safety radio news for Friday, 15 August 2014.

UK may block comms sales to Israel. The UK government may consider blocking sales to Israel of militarily significant equipment, including communications and cryptographic gear, if Israel continues hostilities in Gaza.

Busy day for beacons. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority had a busy day on Thursday, 13 August, when it responded to three distress beacons within the space of four hours. Separate maritime incidents near Darwin and the Cocos Islands resulted in 12 people being rescued with no loss of life. The third incident happened in South Australia when an off-road motorcyclist crashed. The rider was rescued safely.

FCC streamlines tower regulations. The FCC has voted to update its Park 17 rules, which govern tower construction, marking and lighting. Changes include a waiver on quarterly inspections for tower owners who put in place continuous remote monitoring systems that are connected to a 24/7-staffed network operations centre. As an example of the cost savings this might bring, American Tower, which already has a monitoring system, says it spends US$1.7m per year on inspections.

Emergency centre behind schedule. Full implementation of a US$18m emergency communications system for Dane County in Wisconsin, USA, is now one year behind schedule with no completion date in sight. Problems with the DaneCom system include intermittent audio problems on console equipment and delays in field-testing a 'mutual aid subsystem', which will enable out-of-county units with different equipment to communicate with the centre and other DaneCom field units.

Circular massive MIMO is better. If you're technically inclined, you might like to read a recent paper submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, titled 'Performance Analysis and Location Optimisation for Massive MIMO Systems with Circularly Distributed Antennas'. The researchers conclude that circularly distributed massive MIMO systems largely outperform centralised massive MIMO systems.

Innovation centre for LTE-A and 5G. Huawei and LG Uplus have jointly announced that they have established a Mobile Innovation Centre (MIC) in Seoul, Korea. The MIC will enable LG Uplus to use Huawei's solutions and products to improve its ability to offer the most advanced, high-quality and cost-competitive services to customers.

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