Frequently Water Supplies for Industrial Sites in Oil and Gas, Petrochemical, Mining, and Pulp and Paper Operations are drawn from lakes and rivers that are located a distance from the Plant Site. There is need to monitor and control the pump station from the Plant site. This is accomplished with a wired or wireless communication link.

Lease & Dedicated Lines

Traditionally, telephone company “telco” lease lines or dedicated lines were used for Telemetry or SCADA communication between the sites. Telco lease lines are being phased out or are increasingly costly as the the line cost is determined by the distance to the telco C.O. Dedicated lines may be failing due to water ingress or mechanical damage. This gives rise to the possible use of wireless data links for this application.

Wireless Communication – Licensed or Unlicensed Radio

Licensed or Unlicensed radio communication may be an alternative solution for plant to offsite SCADA communication. However in many cases the pump station is located by the river, down an embankment, without good direct RF communication path as shown in the following diagram.

Use of a radio repeater for an wireless link may be an option, however again in many cases, there may be difficulty in co-locating the repeater site on non-company owned land.

Cellular SCADA Communication

Cellular communications may be an option if the pump station site has a good line of site communications to a cell tower.  Pump stations are often located on the river banks with terrain obstructing a good RF path.

Satellite SCADA Communication

Satellite SCADA communications can be an option, if the pump station site has good line of site communications to the satellite. Typically geo-synchronous satellite networks with satellite located above the equator is utilized for SCADA communications.  If there is a clear view to the satellite at nominally 30 degrees above the horizon looking south, satellite SCADA communications can be achieved.

SAT120 Dual Mode Satellite/Cellular Wireless Communications

An option for cost effective SCADA communications for this application is the SCADALink SAT120. With Dual Mode Operation of Satellite and Cellula, the SCADALink SAT120 Modem can be used to provide a cost effective communication solution for this application.

In areas with cellular communication, the SAT120’s Satellite link can provide path redundancy. The SAT120 with Cellular to Satellite fail-over provides a reliable cost effective airtime solution.  If only satellite communication is available it can be used. The SAT120 / SatSCADA being a integrated system with both Satellite and Cellular technologies ensures an easy to deploy solution.

SAT120 as Repeater

In applications with more difficult  terrain where both Satellite and Cellular links are unavailable,  the SAT120 can be used as repeater where wireline, licensed or unlicensed radio used as a link extend it to a site where a SAT120 can be used to bring it to the site.