Wireless routers keep weather data online

Digi Connect WAN routers on a common Ethernet network create the most advanced weather and oceanographic monitoring station in the world.

Radius Technologies (Radtech) was recently contracted to build a meteorological tower 28km off the eastern coast of England in the North Sea.

Radtech, a leader in the construction of self-supporting towers for radio communications, meteorological, security, and CCTV monitoring, needed to come up with a method of networking all the component devices on the station and making them accessible remotely.

With reliability being essential, the solution Radtech settled on was Digi Connect WAN routers on a common Ethernet network.

The result is the most advanced weather and oceanographic monitoring station in the world, which can be accessed remotely from anywhere via an Internet connection.

Centrica, a leading supplier of renewable energy in the UK, contracted Radtech to carry out the construction of the tower.

The purpose of this station was to determine the feasibility of building a major wind farm in the area to produce electricity.

This process involves gathering data on wind, precipitation, currents, wave patterns and forms, temperature, air pressure, and other meteorological measurements over a prolonged period of time.

Gathering this amount of data requires a large amount of different equipment.

There were some basic compatibility issues between components, and some of the devices only had serial connectivity, whereas others were Ethernet ready.

Radtech's engineers realised that successfully integrating all the equipment was a big enough challenge, but they also had to overcome the difficulty of providing reliable data transmission between the tower and its land-based control centre.

There was no option for a traditional hard-wire approach this far out to sea.

The options initially considered by Radtech included cellular modems that send analogue signals over a GSM network.

However, this solution would have limited flexibility as while the sensors on the tower could send data out, Radtech would not be able to communicate to the tower when they wanted to actively control somthing, such as changing or monitoring the sensors.

Over the many years that the tower will be active, it will be necessary to do this often.

analogue cellular modems also restrict the type of communication as they do not support IP traffic.

It was decided that the best way to communicate to this remote platform - and to achieve the results sought by Centrica - was to use four Digi Connect WAN routers.

The Digi Connect WAN cellular routers, which are the sole network connection for the tower, are able to convert GPRS signals to Ethernet and vice-versa.

Integration was made much simpler thanks to the Connect WAN's ability to network all the signals on the tower under one IP address.

This enabled all networked devices on the tower to communicate over the Internet.

As the Digi Connect WAN can connect serial as well as Ethernet devices, the serial sensors were also able to communicate.

"This was not a painless integration", stated Trond Thorman of Radtech.

"We had a lack of understanding of GSM and GPRS, so we had to work closely with Digi's technical support".

"The support staff at Digi worked with us, actually taking the time to learn what we wanted to do, then helping us to do it".

"Although this was a new kind of installation for us and Digi, their technology is at the cutting edge, and the results have been very positive".

The Digi system also allowed for dual redundancy by linking two Connect WANs over a common Ethernet network.

So in the unlikely event that one of the routers were damaged, it would not interrupt the flow of information.

This is essential as the tower is unmanned; during the year, it cannot be reached sometimes for months due to harsh weather conditions; and the cellular router is the sole network connection for the tower.

The system is easy to upgrade and modify without rewiring or changing firmware.

All that is needed is the Connect WAN's IP address (this is a static IP from provider Wyless) and a port number, and modifications to the tower can be made quickly, easily and effectively.

The solution also successfully linked the centre to the tower so that commands could be given to gather different types of data, or to control CCTV cameras and other components.

The weather tower is now operating, and transmitting data continuously to the project's monitoring centre.

Data will have to be gathered for several years before a decision can be made as to whether or not the location will be suitable for siting wind turbines.

The Radtech equipment should be operational for a minimum of 15 years, and is likely to continue to be used even after a decision to build turbines is made.

Now Radtech is using Digi Connect WANs in all of their new installations, making them the only company in their sector to offer IP connectivity for such applications.

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