Scada system for highway traffic uses wireless comms
August 2003
SCADA/HMI
Information Security
A traffic control expert has succeeded in setting up the second stage of a traffic scada system along a section of Taiwan's national highway. In order to maintain good traffic and road conditions, the traffic scada system had to improve the monitoring of traffic flow, as well as rush hour traffic management, safety signs and emergency alarm systems.
Firstly, the scada system had to provide a fast and reliable, high quality, data transfer solution over long geographical distances. In addition, the government requested the use of fibre optics and high-speed Ethernet to link the local units in order to send local data to the regional control centres.
The second key factor was to overcome the mountainous area around the Taipei Basin. The highway bureau requested a wireless solution, since the installation costs of physically wiring the area would be expensive and would demand too much maintenance.
In order to meet the demand of single mode data transfer, at a minimum distance of 10 km, the ADAM-4542 was designed, a single mode fibre-optic RS232/422/485 converter with capabilities of up to 15 km. A total of 192 units were installed between the local control units and the highway devices to upload and download traffic information. The uploaded data was then transferred through the Ethernet to the control centres. In addition, eight sets of licence-free ADAM-4550 2,4 GHz wireless radio modems were placed on four mountain peaks along with 24 dB directional antennas. The 2,4 GHz bandwidth offers proportionately higher data transfer rates than the slower 900 MHz standard. The ADAM-4550 modules provided three channels to handle traffic information from different remote control units.
The regional control centre installed eight IPC-610 14-slot rack-mount IPC chassis and 25 MIC-2000 controllers for the data processing terminals in order to cope with the huge volume of data and realtime requests.
The ADAM communication modules and MIC controllers provided a space efficient solution. Since all the products are PC-based and operate under Windows, they are highly compatible with the system. The national bureau plans to apply this system to other sections of the highway as well as highways in other areas.
For more information contact Elton Prytz, ProMicro, 011 706 7913, [email protected], www.promicro.co.za
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