Every second counts!

A favourite sport of many RACOM staff, the European Orienteering Championships were held in Jesenik, Czech Republic toward the end of May 2016. Czech Television provided the images that were beamed around the world. At this level of competition, precision timing is vital and this level of accuracy must be combined with an extremely efficient radio network to transmit the data to race control and broadcasters, to provide accurate up to date information on race progress and the leaderboard.

Enter RACOM’s MR series radio modems.

Thanks to their extraordinary intelligence, speed and switching time, RACOM MR series modems are suitable for all types of networks where emphasis is placed on speed and reliability; an ideal solution for transmitting data at an orienteering event where you may have 6 competitors registering a split time at a specific control point within a one second period, which equates to 18 radio packets per second!

In top orienteering events, each competitor carries an SI card providing a unique identifier. When passing every control point [there are between 20 and 30 in each race] the competitors’ SI card must punch the control point. 10 to 12 radios are used in each race with up to 4 radio hops to transmit data from control points in the forest to the finish in very undulating terrain. RACOM’s equipment proves to be so robust and effective in such conditions that it is regularly used at sporting events where split times need to be transmitted to race control, both in Czech Republic and further afield.

RACOM staff set up equipment at key control points with data transmitted simultaneously to the organizers and to Czech Television to be displayed on the various leader boards at the event and on Czech Television’s live transmission of races. The time delay between a competitor punching a control point and their information being displayed on TV is typically less than 100ms.