Profibus by radio controls sewage pumping stations

United Utilities in the North West of England, have adopted Profibus over a radio telemetry link for the control systems on their waste water treatment works at Soutergate in Cumbria

United Utilities, water suppliers in the North West of England, have adopted Profibus for the control systems on their waste water treatment works.

They have 3 waste water pumping stations feeding a treatment works at Soutergate in Cumbria.

The distance between the pumping stations and the treatment works is up to 1 mile.

It is essential that data is exchanged between the pumping stations and the treatment works for efficient operation and the avoidance of floods.

The installation of cable would have been prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

Also, the running costs associated with the use of public networks ruled out this option.

For these reasons United Utilities opted to use a dedicated radio system operating in the licence free low power telemetry band.

However Profibus presents some special requirements that cannot be met by a conventional narrow band radio modem without severely compromising the performance of the Profibus network as a whole.

For this reason the RDT PB1000 interface module was selected as this uses a new approach whereby the modem/interface module is itself a Profibus slave rather than simply a communication device.

This means that the Profibus networks can operate at full speed without restriction and also that diagnostic information is available and fail-safe features can be applied - essential in such an environmentally sensitive application.

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