Land Mobile October 2009

Machine to machine
Investing for success
Wireless offers opportunities to develop new and fl exible solutions for M2M
communications. Making the right technology choices to deliver these is critical.
Alan Wood believes that the key to success lies in careful planning and design
T
he value of the telemetry market ponents, can mask other issues, such as power
in Europe, already a multi-million consumption and latency.
dollar business, is set to grow by a In addition it is easy to underestimate the
How telemetry
further 50 per cent by 2014, according to costs of verifi cations and type approvals that
lets the bus pass
research published by Frost & Sullivan. En- need to be considered with standards-based
abling data communications through wireless applications – and these can be prohibitively
delivers seemingly endless opportunities to high. Whilst proprietary solutions may ini-
I
n another recent telemetry project, less
safety-critical than the fi re service example
improve the monitoring, measurement and tially be perceived as higher-cost options, this
below but no less challenging, Wood
reporting of information to enhance projects is not always the case, particularly when you
& Douglas worked with Continental, a
and improve eﬃ ciencies. consider the total cost of ownership over a
provider of technology for public transport
At a macro level, this provides an encourag- project life-cycle.
services, on one of the world’s largest real-
ing picture of a growing market – yet, for the Th e most critical issue is to identify the
time bus management implementations. A
project manager aiming to deliver the right needs of an application and to design the most
radio system was needed to pass data from
application for a particular project, the picture appropriate solution to fi t those needs, wheth-
moving buses to traffi c lights, to give buses
can be extremely confusing. Th ere is a range er that is standards-based or bespoke.
priority over other road users. This had to
of diﬀ erent technologies that can be used to
be integrated into an existing application
deliver a wireless application, and picking the Off-the-shelf or bespoke
providing communications across the bus
right one can be challenging. Th e total cost As the wireless telemetry market grows, we will
network in London. The wireless solution
of implementation can be hidden by headline see more standards-based technologies being
had to comply with a standard developed
savings that fail to consider fully the complex- developed – both general standards such as
by the marketplace to provide a consistent
ity, scalability and future requirements of a Bluetooth and local vertical market standards.
way of exchanging this information.
solution. In some cases these solutions will be the most
The project itself incorporated radio design,
suitable to meet requirements. However, as ap-
PC board design and design and manufacture
Planning and execution plications become more complex, there will
of the relevant enclosures to ensure the
More than ever in the current economic cli- continue to be strong demand for bespoke
integrity of the service in all circumstances.
mate, investments in wireless data communi- wireless applications.
This wireless data communications application
cations have to be supported by solutions that Ultimately, the key to delivering the most
should help to play a part in ensuring that
generate signifi cant added value. Making the eﬀ ective return on investment is to ensure that
people travelling by London public transport
wrong choices risks wasted time and money. the technology serves the business need, and
have a quicker and more comfortable journey.
Inevitably, sound planning and execution are not vice versa.
the key to delivering long term success.
Standards-based short range solutions such
as Bluetooth or ZigBee have been developed
with the aim of oﬀ ering a mass-market, ‘one
Radiotelemetry in the fl ames
size fi ts all’ approach to radio communica-
tions. But these technologies are not appro-
O
ne challenging telemetry project
on which Wood & Douglas worked
priate to every wireless data application and
recently was to develop a wireless
the perceived advantages of standards-based
fi recrew monitoring system in partnership
solutions, such as the easy availability of com-
with Draeger Safety. In such a working
environment there is no scope for failure:
About the author
people’s lives are literally on the line and the
solution needs to deliver, even in the extreme
Alan Wood is
and hostile environments in which fi refi ghters
managing director of
often work.
Wood & Douglas, a
After considering the implications of
leading UK designer
public networks and a Bluetooth-based level of reliability and fl exibility required to
and manufacturer
solution, it could be seen that there were deliver critical data in real time, whatever
of radio products for
clear advantages in a bespoke radio challenging circumstances the fi refi ghters
telemetry
development. This would provide the might fi nd themselves in.
24 LAND mobile October 2009
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