New service helps decrease wireless operating costs

Louise Davis

Roke Manor Research has launched a radio interference mitigation service, which will help industrial processing plants that wirelessly monitor assets and operations to overcome interference, increase reliability and decrease operating costs of radio-based equipment.

The processing industry increasingly relies on wireless radio systems to acquire data remotely. However, they regularly experience downtime due to interference from other technologies that operate in the overcrowded VHF and UHF Radio Frequency (RF) bands. Businesses are therefore fighting escalating operating and installation costs as a decrease in system reliability necessitates the deployment of more expensive technologies, significantly reducing the benefits of using wireless monitoring.

Bryan Rickett, electromagnetic business area lead at Roke, said: “The V/UHF bands are very popular with the processing industry due to their wide coverage, good propagation and low infrastructure costs. However, their increased usage means that they have become a victim of their own success as interference between different technologies is creating unreliable services that result in costing money rather than saving it. Our new service will provide expertise to help businesses once again benefit from the use of RF technologies.”

Roke’s RF interference mitigation service comprises: planning and design advice; analysis and modelling (propagation models through to detailed modelling); monitoring and diagnostics (direction finding of co-channel signals using super-resolution technology); and mitigation design, manufacture, fitting and testing (antenna layout, antenna selection, filtering, screening and various forms of cancellation technology).