SOFTWARE & SYSTEMS
CALLING ALL PASSENGERS…
PRODUCTS4AUTOMATION
SCADA TAKES GATWICK’S PUBLIC-ADDRESS
SYSTEM TO NEXT LEVEL
Gatwick is one of the busiest airports
in the world with over 50 aircraft
movements an hour and 35-40 million
passengers annually.
Photo: Gatwick Airport Media Centre
Gatwick Airport has incorporated Movicon
SCADA software from Products4Automation
(P4A) in its North Terminal public address
system to handle alarms and provide an
interface to an older legacy system.
Gatwick is one of the busiest airports in the
world with over 50 aircraft movements an
hour and 35-40 million passengers annually.
As such, its public-address system is vital for
both passenger awareness and safety.
The PA system in Gatwick’s South Terminal is
relatively new, but there was an older system
in the North Terminal which the management
team wanted to upgrade. They set the goal
of developing the most advanced automated
PA at any airport in the world. This would
improve customer service by providing more
information with better quality audibility
when conveying general information and
for emergency announcements. It would
also mean a single user interface could be
developed for use on both terminals’ PAs,
simplifying operational procedures and
introducing new operator features.
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PECM Issue 37
To achieve these aims, Gatwick required
the ‘most advanced text-to-speech system,
including multi-lingual capabilities’ available.
This would be used to make automated
announcements, driven by events,
rescheduling, time etc. It would also be
accessible by ‘mobile’ information assistants
mingling with the public on the concourse
using a simple interface on a handheld
tablet.
At the time the project was conceived, an
existing solution was not available, so a
contract was awarded to Gloucestershire’s
Microwatt Ltd to develop and install such
a system. Microwatt was already known
to Gatwick because it had developed the
technology behind the airport’s Priority
Lane VIP services and some of the catering
operations. It has also developed and
installed innovative systems for MoD
bases, fire and rescue control centres and
automotive production lines.
The automated PA - called Phonetica - is a
Linux based software package that interfaces
to the existing PA. Microwatt developed
an ‘alarm back indication system’ for the PA
system which logs alarms such as speaker
faults, and amplifier cut outs. The alarm back
indication uses Movicon SCADA as a platform
which connects the concourse, engineering
control room, and six separate rack rooms
into a single network. The Movicon system
monitors 48 different alarms (eight in each
rack room), monitors the temperature at nine
different locations and interfaces with the
old PA system that has been retained as a
backup resource.
Movicon SCADA (supervisory control
and data acquisition) is a control system
architecture that uses a network of
interconnected computers and graphical
user interfaces to provide efficient real-time
high-level management. Other devices
such as programmable logic controllers and
discrete PID controllers can interface with
the SCADA network and in recent years this
has come to include mobile devices such as
tablet computers and smartphones.