Persistent Systems says “Wave Relay® unlocks the full capabilities of machine to machine (M2M) technologies in complex mining applications. So much more than just a radio, the Wave Relay solution enables end-users to bring every operator and piece of equipment into a single network.” The more Wave Relay nodes a mine installs, the stronger the network becomes. As nodes move dynamically through any imaginable environment, the network will “self-form” to enable the strongest-possible connection between any group of nodes. That means that once initial configuration is complete, no network maintenance is required. Another advantage of Wave Relay is that it does not rely on any single access point. If any single node fails, the network will “self-heal” by automatically and instantaneously re-routing information through the next-strongest path.
The capability of Wave Relay radio modules to connect at distances of up to 200 km makes it easy to network everything in an open-pit mine. Moreover, the patented multi-hop capability of all Wave Relay® devices also enables any two devices to connect beyond line-of-sight, a powerful capability to have particularly in an underground setting. Integration with GPS receivers allows position location information (PLI) data to be transferred across the network at lightning speeds –displaying the position of every node in the network on a map, even when nodes are constantly in motion.
Perhaps best of all, Wave Relay can bridge new equipment and older legacy devices alike in one scalable, fault-tolerant network. Persistent Systems says: “As the first true Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (MANET) solution, Wave Relay has a proven track record of reliability that puts it in a class by itself.”
A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile devices, such as a Rugged Radio (often referred to as “nodes”), that form a self-configuring network. The devices communicate wirelessly by relaying data across the network through a sequence of transmissions. In a true MANET such as Wave Relay every node can communicate with every other node enabling true peer-to-peer connectivity. This is in marked contrast to the far more common mesh network design, in which a series of stationary access points connect end users only to the Internet.
