There are numerous applications where knowing the weather conditions would improve the quality or safety of life and productivity. However, often meteorological measurements are seen as time consuming, expensive and requiring too much expertise in order to be a common practice. Telecommunicating the data from remote places is also frequently expensive and difficult to arrange.
Vaisala automatic weather stations (AWS) have been designed to overcome these obstacles. The MAWS301 is a new generation weather station especially designed for applications where no commercial power or communication networks are present or economically installed. MAWS301 is a compact, scalable, environmentally robust and low power system to provide reliable and continuous data on a broad range of meteorological and hydrological parameters. It is based on the latest technology both in measurements and communication. MAWS301 interfaces to a variety of telecommunications equipment such as PSTN and GSM modems, UHF radios and satellite transmitters. Imbedded with sophisticated yet easy to use technology, MAWS is an ideal choice for a wide range of meteorological applications where reliability and accuracy are required at a low total cost of ownership.
For weather forecasting or early warning of bad weather, data is often required from remote places where no commercial telecommunication services exist. Also, the locations may often be beyond cellular coverage or in valleys shadowed by mountains. There are also applications where the reliability of the communication is an issue under emergency situations such as severe flooding or bush fires. In these applications the UHF radio has proved to be an economical and reliable way of transmitting meteorological data.
Vaisala has successfully incorporated Satel’s Satelline-3AS radio modems in the MAWS systems. For portable research and tactical meteorological systems, Vaisala and Satel developed a special light weight but robust weather enclosure for the 3AS that allows quick, easy and cost effective equipment deployment, even under difficult weather and operating conditions.
When using UHF radio modems in the weather stations networks the data can be transmitted at practically no cost to several different users. One single weather station can serve as a repeater for several other stations thus extending the communication path to tens of kilometres. Modern radio modems such as Satelline-3AS are well suited for applications where a solar panel is used for powering the weather stations.
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