GeoBase in Action
Canadian Coast Guard: Placing mountaintop radiocommunications sites
The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) Integrated Technical Services uses GeoBase's Canadian Digital Elevation Data (CDED) data layer to find optimal locations for mountaintop radiocommunication sites.
To the right is an example of a typical image produced using the Radio Mobile software and the CDED data layer. This image shows the predicted paths to several proposed sites for remote equipment locations. The path profiles in red indicate that the shot is obstructed, where the profiles in green indicate an unobstructed shot.
"Access to this high quality data is essential to this part of my job," says Cameron Bremner from the Telecom Engineering Workshop. Once the remote radio sites have been placed, they can be used for a variety of functions. Some sites have VHF repeaters that allow users-such as Fisheries and Oceans Canada-to communicate over great distances using portable radios. Other CCG sites are networked together via microwave broadband links and are outfitted with Marine VHF FM radio equipment that allows watercraft to communicate with the CCG's Maritime Communications and Traffic Services.
This is a typical fibreglass mountain top communications enclosure of the type commonly known as a 'Comshel'. Integrated Technical Services is involved in the engineering, construction, and installation of equipment into remote sites like this one that Marine Communications and Traffic Services centres use to provide their services to the public. This site was a co-operative effort between several user groups in the Southern Yukon and Transboundary Area. Fisheries and Oceans Canada uses this site to house a VHF repeater that links the Taku repeater to the Flat Mountain repeater near Whitehorse.
"Prior to the repeater's installation, the camp had been using an unsatisfactory combination of unpredictable HF radio and very expensive and unreliable handheld satellite phone services," says Bremner. The end result is that users at the Erickson Slough camp or on the Taku River are able to communicate with the Whitehorse office using portable radios. According to Bremner, this has greatly increased the amount and quality of information being passed back and forth as well as improving occupational health and safety conditions.