History and Operation of the Mass State Police Radio System

When:
April 12, 2017 @ 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm America/New York Timezone
2017-04-12T16:00:00-04:00
2017-04-12T17:30:00-04:00
Where:
MIT Lincoln Laboratory - Auditorium
244 Wood St
Lexington, MA 02420
USA

Life Members

Speaker: John Ruggiero, Massachusetts State Police Radio Engineer

About 20 years ago, the MASSACHUSETTS STATE POLICE realized that their existing, 40 year old, Conventional 44 MHz Radio System was not able to provide adequate “through-put”, especially on very busy summer weekends or during winter storm events.

In 1989, they started with a new 800 MHz, three site system that had trunked repeaters on Blue Hill, the McCormick Building in Boston and on Turkey Hill in Arlington. The initial system was designed to provide coverage only to mobiles inside the Route 128 area. The system was then expanded in 1994 to provide mobile coverage inside I-495, including additional fixed repeaters in Andover, Essex, Georgetown, Chelmsford, Sudbury, and Wrentham. Specialized coverage of the Ted Williams Tunnel was added in1996. Coverage of Plymouth and Bristol Counties was added with six additional radio sites in 1998.

The new 800 MHz system uses a network of Central Control computers that allocate a “shared” radios channels in a manner that is similar to the technology that was used to allocate toll telephone trunks.

Biographical Sketch of John Ruggiero: John graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Electrical Engineering and has over 15 years’ experience with the State Police as MSP Radio Engineer.

John has played a pivotal role in several missions, including serving as technical coordinator for the 800 MHz “Rebanding” effort and responding to the Town of Monson in June 2011 to establish communications after the police department was destroyed by a tornado. John also responded with a team of COM-L’s to Suffolk County (Long Island) New York in the days after Superstorm Sandy, assisting local, state, and federal agencies to re-establish communications systems after the storm destroyed the existing infrastructure; initially there were no hotel rooms available, so he slept in his truck for the first two days. In addition, John was a member of a small and dedicated MSP communications contingent present at the Boston Marathon finish-line in April 2013. He was volunteering (as a Ham Radio coordinator) on that day, but quickly jumped into action and played an important role to establish communications capabilities at the Westin Hotel Command Post immediately following the explosions. He responded with CP-1 when the manhunt operation was underway in Watertown on 4/19/13.

The meeting will be held at the Lincoln Lab Auditorium, 244 Wood Street. Lexington, MA at 4:00 PM. Refreshments will be served at 3:30 PM.

Registration is in the main lobby. Foreign national visitors to Lincoln Lab require visit requests. Please pre-register by e-mail to reception@ll.mit.edu and indicate your citizenship.

Please use the Wood Street Gate. For directions go to http://www.ll.mit.edu/; for other information, contact Steve Teahan, Chairman, at (978)763-5136, or Steve.F.Teahan@raytheon.com