DECT Base Station

Overview

A DECT base station is the radio that gives cordless desk and warehouse phones their freedom of movement. DECT is a dedicated cordless-telephony standard, separate from Wi-Fi, with its own slice of spectrum and a protocol built specifically for clean, low-latency voice. An IP-DECT base like this one bridges that radio link to a telephone system over the data network, so handsets roam through a building while their calls travel as IP packets back to the PBX.

The DECT Mainboard is the core, carrying the DECT chipset that manages the air link, an application processor running the SIP signaling, and a codec converting between the two. The Radio Module is the RF section: a transceiver, a power amplifier, and a diversity antenna pair that give the base its reach. A single cable to the Network Port both carries the voice traffic and powers the unit over PoE. The Enclosure is an RF-transparent shell, the Status LED reports registration, and the Wall Mount Kit fixes it to a wall.

How it works

DECT divides time into frames of twenty-four slots, twelve down and twelve up, and a handset reserves a matched pair for the duration of a call. Because every base on a site shares the same few carrier frequencies, the chipset constantly measures the channels and the handset hops to a cleaner slot if interference rises, all without dropping the call. The diversity antennas counter fading: the radio samples both and uses whichever gives the stronger signal moment to moment, which is what lets a phone work in the dead spots of a steel-framed building.

On the network side the base is a small VoIP gateway. When a call connects, the codec packetizes the DECT voice into RTP and the application processor signals the PBX over SIP, so to the phone system the cordless handset looks like any other extension. Registration data for each handset is held in flash, and the whole unit, radio and gateway alike, runs from the power delivered over its one Ethernet cable, which keeps installation to a single drop per coverage cell.