Rohde & Schwarz rolls out worldwide largest R&S RCMS II for DFS

German ANSP DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH receives full remote control and monitoring capability for its nationwide civil air traffic communications infrastructure with R&S RCMS II by Rohde & Schwarz.

Munich, February 18, 2020 – Rohde & Schwarz today announced completing the roll out of the company’s remote control and monitoring system (R&S RCMS II) for the German Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH.

DFS operates more than 4000 Rohde & Schwarz radios in about 100 stations all over Germany. As a part of its efforts to optimize maintenance and to simplify operations, DFS requested a central management and monitoring system for the radios, as well as peripheral components, such as network switches. With the finalization of this project, Rohde & Schwarz enabled DFS to remotely manage and monitor not only the largest installation of R&S Series4200 radios, but also various other system components in civil air traffic communications.

“The new Rohde & Schwarz solution is a significant upgrade in comparison to our previous system, which only offered Simple Network Management Protocol [SNMP] functionality,” Ralf Bertsch, Director Systems and Infrastructure Services, DFS, explains. “We are excited about the comprehensive functionality of R&S RCMS II, as it offers us seamless remote control and monitoring of the nationwide radio infrastructure.”

“R&S RCMS II is a cornerstone of our CERTIUM advanced communication suite solution,” Constantin von Reden, Vice President Market Segment ATC, Rohde & Schwarz, continues. “It allows to monitor Rohde & Schwarz radios, VCS-4G components and third party devices. It can easily be adapted when air traffic control operators need to expand their communications systems. The responsible engineering or maintenance user benefits from an enhanced situational awareness of the overall communications system in real time.”

R&S RCMS II enables engineering staff of ATC systems to monitor Rohde & Schwarz radios, R&S VCS-4G devices and other Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) capable components, like network routers and switches, from one or more locations. This scalable software can easily be configured for customer-specific ATC systems. By using commercial off the shelf (COTS) computer hardware and existing network infrastructure, the required capital expenditures and operational costs can be kept to a minimum. R&S RCMS II is a central part of the advanced ATC communications suite called CERTIUM, which Rohde & Schwarz will launch at the World ATM Congress in March this year.