Here is a recap of the show in case you missed us. The top most common question we had at APCO 2022 was on the TC3846-6. An important product for Public Safety Solutions , the 2 and 4-wire Analog Radio over IP continues to draw a lot of interest. See below for the answers to the questions:

The TC3846-6, a 2W/4W E&M 600 ohm over IP gateway, is deployed across industries that require reliable, efficient support for critical communications. Below are the four most common questions we receive:

1. Do I need 2W or 4W, and will the unit support audio in only one direction?

   Most applications use 4W as the setup. In this case there is a pair of audio lines for each direction as shown below:

   

   If an application such as a voted radio receiver requires only audio to be passed in one direction, then use one of the two pairs.

   
   • In a 2-wire application the audio only uses a single pair of wires for audio in both directions.
   • 2-wire applications can be both half and full duplex. The TC3846-6 supports both when ordered as 2-wire duplex. An example of 2W duplex operation is some Zetron consoles.

2. Does it support pilot and guard tones?

   Successful passing of tones is critical to the operation of a radio system. Digitizing voice using VoIP can affect the quality of tones, as they are often high in the audio frequency range (example tone of 2100 Hz) and are adversely cupped by compression necessary in some digitization schemes.

   The TC3846-6 does not compress audio in the 300 Hz-3400 Hz range and reproduces all audio, including pilot and guard tones. Tone control is seamless.

   An alternate way to handle tone control is to detect the tone and then regenerate it at the far end. This is not used in the TC3846-6 as it typically provides longer and variable latency across the link, which provides potential issues in some applications such as radio voting.

3. I have four remote sites linked to a central site. Do I need 4 x TC3846-6 at the central site?

   The TC3846-6 has up to 4 ports per card, so additional units are not needed.

   In the following scenario, there is only one port used per remote site. In this case as the overall number of ports used are only 4, just one TC3846-6 is required at the central site.

   

   In the following scenario multiple ports are used at the remote sites and the number of ports total 8, so 2 x TC3846-6 are required at the central site.

   

4. How can I reduce overall system latency?

   Latency reduction requires more bandwidth. If a slightly higher latency can be tolerated, lower bandwidth is acceptable.

   This is shown in the following graph:

   

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