Modern Communication Methods for SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)

 

In the thirty years that I have been associated with radio communications systems, the industry has taken giant steps to deliver faster, bigger bandwidth, more reliable, less expensive equipment to their customers.  This presentation will start with telemetry systems from the sixties and seventies and proceed to the systems that are available in the marketplace today.

 

With the implementation of appropriate security measures receiving full attention in the water supply industry, many municipalities are faced with the challenge of not only monitoring their facilities through SCADA, but adding remote video surveillance and datalogging for security at remote sites.  Most municipalities today already have SCADA systems in place, but those using radio communications as the primary backbone have been limited to traditional small bandwidths of less than 9600 bps.  This leaves Municipalities with only minimal bandwidth for datalogging retrieval and remote surveillance applications.

 

Recently there has been an explosion in wireless products available on the market that will allow municipalities to leverage their existing infrastructure and available resources.  These wireless products are based on the Ethernet communications media that is the underlying core in most office networking environments.

 

This presentation will review fundamental concepts of wireless Ethernet communication, design considerations for implementation into new and existing Municipal SCADA systems, benefits of using wireless Ethernet versus conventional radio systems, and its application with datalogging retrieval and video surveillance systems.

 

The author has over 15 years of SCADA automation and consulting engineering experience in water, waste water, and oil and gas industries with both plant and wide area SCADA systems, in Canada, the United States, and South America.

 

 

 

 

Tom Dunn Biography.

 

Tom Dunn is a SCADA and communications specialist with Dayton & Knight Ltd. Electrical Power and Automation (EPA) group.  Dayton & Knight Ltd. is an engineering consulting company which specializes in civil, mechanical, structural, environmental, process, electrical and automation projects for the water and waste water industry.  Their primary clients are municipal, regional, provincial and federal governments.  Dayton & Knight’s main office is in North Vancouver and they have 84 employees working in this and four other branch offices in British Columbia.

 

Tom has a Senior Engineering Technician’s Certificate from the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).  He is a member of the British Columbia Water and Waste Association (BCWWA) and the Instrument Systems and Automation Society (ISA).  Tom has been with Dayton & Knight Ltd. since 1999 and is involved in Regional Wide Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and wireless communications projects.  Prior to Dayton & Knight Ltd., Tom worked for 18 years with Motorola Communications and specialized in integrating RF Telemetry systems designed and built by Motorola’s Fixed Data Group.  He recently retired from the Canadian Naval Reserve as a Naval Radio Operator and Chief Petty Officer 2nd Class.  He is also a Ham Radio Operator with his Advanced Certificate (VE7TD).