Highlights
- RipEX, 400 MHz
- Water well management
- Installation in desert, over +50 °C
- High reliability
- Long distances – 10W
- Modbus protocol
- One Master & 64 remotes
https//www.racom.eu/eng/references/water-wells
Although 71% of the earth is made up of water, only 2.5% of this water is fresh and suitable for human consumption. This creates a growing demand to establish alternative accessible fresh water reservoirs, including groundwater.
Water wells are commonly drilled to enable access to ground water reservoirs. The ground water can then be transferred between reservoirs to maintain regulated supplies. To manage such an invaluable resource, a secure and reliable communication method is required between the pumps, equipment and the water wells.
RipEX radio modems have been chosen as the optimal solution for a project providing water well management in Saudi Arabia. The Systems Integrator, Abunayyan Trading, were asked to provide a solution to transmit telemetry data from sixty four wells to a Central control centre. Key requirements included using a radio that offered 10Watt availability and that was able to transmit over long distances without the need for repeaters.
Having looked at and tested a selection of options available to them, Abunayyan selected RipEX as their radio of choice; the listed parameters for this radio modem, backed up with test results, showed RipEX was a perfect solution for this particular project.
One RipEX radio was positioned at the central control room as Master using Modbus protocol to communicate with the slaves. Master slave polling has been configured using half duplex communication thus ensuring that any radio transmission could use the full bandwidth available.
Specific issues that had been raised during the planning stage of the project were the long distances between sites and the harsh conditions of the environment that the equipment had to endure. On both counts RipEX reputation for reliability, performance and robustness have proven to be well founded.
Furthermore, the intuitive design of the interface enabled the network to be configured and implemented without needing to seek additional support from RACOM.
