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Designing/establishing viable comms. links

I work for a water company building new waster water treatment works (wwtw).

The company have both regional and site SCADA systems.

The regional SCADA system has approximately 20 scanner (base stations) with hundreds of sites (outstation) reporting essential signals back to central control.

OFCOM has set aside 80 channels in the 460 MHz region for regional scanning telemetry in the water industry.


The company also has comms. links for the site SCADA systems. These are only installed at large strategic works and therefore much fewer in number (40) and have dedicated mini microwave point to point links.

I am not sure of their frequency but suspect it could be a few Ghz.


My question relates to propagation of microwaves in this region of 460 MHz to a few GHz.

The wwtw I am working at present is at design stage and will have both the regional and site SCADA systems installed.

The company have seperate sections for designing the links and I have been told that although the regional telemetry system can be designed using a 460 MHz radio link

the site SCADA cannot be reached via radio and will require a leased line from a supplier e.g. Virgin.


The 2 systems use the same base station and therefore have the same path profile. I have been told the site SCADA cannot be reached via radio because it is a different frequency ?


Parents
  • Mike, Gav

    Many thanks for input.

    Although I obtained an honours degree Electrical & Electronic Engineering many many years ago, I dont have any experience.

    I have used a feely available app called Radio Mobile, which I have plundered around trying to get some meaningful results.

    I have only managed to do this in small amounts and realise there is alot that I dont know or understand about the app.

    This is entirely down to me and is no reflection on the app. As you say this is a very specialised field and the people who work in it are almost worth their weight in gold.

    Any suggestions on how I could become more profficient in this area, particularly in relation to my work would be most welcome.

    Thanks, Derek

  • well  if we do not mind showing the ragged underwear of the process to amuse all and sundry, then for one, I'm happy to answer questions I can on here, though my responses may be a bit delayed or terse, if work is pressing at least without facts that identify people, locations and anything that might be considered sensitive.

    There are a few good books, but Id need to know your current level to say where to start without either boring or drowning..

    Mike.

Reply
  • well  if we do not mind showing the ragged underwear of the process to amuse all and sundry, then for one, I'm happy to answer questions I can on here, though my responses may be a bit delayed or terse, if work is pressing at least without facts that identify people, locations and anything that might be considered sensitive.

    There are a few good books, but Id need to know your current level to say where to start without either boring or drowning..

    Mike.

Children
  • Dont mind admitting to my shortcomings, I have a few.

    My current level, fairly basic.

  • Hmm. there is basic and basic...

    Well before buying a book at all can I ask how much of this website do you already know ? - it needs to be read with some care as the authors of some of the pages sometimes have a strange sense of humour and of course being US-centric they struggle with proper units of measurement, but a lot of the 'intro to XX' articles are very good.

    It also needs the search option to be set to filter by category, listing by alphabet is all but useless...

    Some basic antenna and propagation concepts are introduced at the RF cafe along with a ton of other stuff that is very hard to find. You will  need to chase through the on-site links the top level is superficial, but beneath that it is labyrinthine .

    Mike