The Thorcom® Automatic Resource Location (ARL) Gateway is a high performance Real-Time Location Service (RTLS) server for a wide range of location-aware and GPS based tracking devices including dedicated locator units such as the Thorcom® VLR200, GSM mobile phones, TETRA mobile and hand-portable radios and analogue/digital business radio that enables Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Person Location (APL) applications to be realised.

Based on Thorcom's successful Short Message Gateway (SMG) software the Thorcom ARL Gateway receives resource location updates transmitted over any of the supported radio networks from a wide range of vendor's equipment and provides standard output messages to Command & Control systems and GIS/mapping systems via simple ASCII or XML message protocols, providing cross-network, multi-vendor support, with open standards and avoiding vendor "lock in".

A key features of the Thorcom ARL Gateway is that it is equipment vendor and communications technology neutral, supporting operation with devices from multiple vendor's and operation over multiple networks, while providing a uniform and consistent interface to the Command & Control system or GIS/mapping system.

This approach nakes it possible to "mix and match" mobile terminals on the network without being locked in to a single supplier, allowing mixed fleets of equipment and networks, separating the Command & Control system or GIS/mapping system functions from specific manufacturers or products, for example an Emergency Service customer might have Cleartone CM9000 TETRA mobiles and Motorola MTH800 hand portables on the Airwave network (in the UK) and then at a later date decide to add equipment from Sepura. Alternatively, a customer may wish to have GSM/GPRS devices such as the Thorcom VLR200 installed in vehicles and use hand-portable TETRA devices such as Sepura SRH3500 and a minxed network solution.

The Thorcom ARL Gateway supports location transmissions from a range of devices and technologies that include:

	TETRA mobiles/hand-portables equipped with ETSI Location Information Protocol (LIP)
	Motorola TETRA mobiles/hand-portables using Motorola's Location Request/Response Protocol (LRRP)
	Cleartone CM9000 (JRC) with NMEA GPS messaging
	Thorcom VLR200 GSM/GPRS locator and telematics unit
	BlackBerry™ mobile phones with Thorcom software on GPRS
	Thorcom MDS700 PMR analogue/digital mobile data networks

The ARL Gateway outputs location data via the Simple Vehicle Location Protocol (SVLP) - a simple, human-readable, ASCII format using comma separated variables which is easy to parse and process, or the Thorcom Resource Location Protocol (TRLP) a well defined XML protocol.

Both SVLP and TRLP are well-defined, mature protocols, that are delivered over a TCP/IP connection where the host system connects to the ARL Gateway to receive data.

Thorcom AVL protocols and ARL Gateway operation is already supported by a number of vendors, applications and system integrators including:

	Thorcom Traksys-CS GIS/Mapping
	Sungard Control DS1000/DS2000 system
	Steria 'Storm' Control Room Solutions
	MIS 'Alert 2000' and 'C3' Command and Control Systems
	Fortek VISION Command and Control System
	Cleric RESPOND 2 Command and Control System
	AssetCo Command and Control System
	Northgate (Blue-8) Mapping Systems
	Intergraph Command & Control system

The Thorcom ARL Gateway software runs on enterprise-class Linux™ operating system (Ubuntu Linux Server 8.04 LTS) and can be configured for high availability operation.

Two servers can be arranged to operate as a pair as "Main" and "Standby" with automatic fail-over should the main server fail, providing resilience against system failure.

In addition wide-area two-site working can be configured so that two control centres can receive data - providing protection against loss of communications to a site or loss of a site as a whole.

Logging and Audit Trail

The Thorcom ARL Gateway maintains a complete audit trail (history log) of all location data received and commands/responses sent to/from Command & Control systems for up to one year.

The audit trail data can be used for replaying vehicle or asset momevents, archived for long-term storage or exported to external management information systems in a variety of formats.

In addition debug data is logged and maintained to allow system performance issues to be investigated and analysed.