Water Management, Morocco

Highlights

• RipEX 160 MHz
• Water Management
• Solar powered
• Flexible protocol
• Back up routes, Repeaters
• Ongoing Migration
• 4CPFSK modulation

Sebou Hydraulic Basin Agency has responsibility for the integrated management of surface and underground water resources within the Sebou basin in Morocco. Water must be preserved in this severe environment and protected against climatic extremes, in particular floods and drought. The basin holds one third of the country’s surface water and is managed by over 10 dams with its industrial and agricultural output providing a considerable contribution to the country’s economy.

The initial telemetry system, used to support water management, was based on GSM transmissions but had marked limitations in terms of throughput and network coverage. For this reason, in 2014, the agency tendered for state-of-the-art, future proofed radio equipment for the hydro-climatological stations to establish a real time, robust and reliable system for flood warning. The legacy GSM network would be kept and used as a back up to the migration network.

The RACOM RipEX radio was chosen for many reasons not least because it provides secure and easy to use IP native communications and has built in features that allow it to function using solar power. Radios are set up in Flexible protocol on the Radio channel using routing tables to manage data communications over the network including Back up routes. The installation engineers were delighted at the simplicity of configuration via the integrated web interface and remote administration possibilities.

The initial migration was realised with 3 stations, 2 repeaters and one acquisition centre at agency headquarters. Making excellent use of the beneficial features of RACOM’s Migration solution, this was scaled up over a four year period to a network consisting of 25 stations, 4 repeaters and one acquisition centre. Indeed, remote stations, up to 80 km from the centre, function without deterioration of their quality of transmission and other stations show the adaptability of the RipEX radio by operating simultaneously as stations and repeaters. The project to extend the radio network is still in force thanks to its compliance with the requirements, in terms of availability, of hydro-climatological data in real time.

Such has been the success of the network to support the Agency’s aims and satisfaction of the engineers involved in the roll out, plans are in place to provide the radio experience to other clients and establish new networks to further support water management in Morocco.