Freewave radios give Dycor competitive advantage over much larger rivals

An executive with Alberta-based defence contractor Dycor Technologies Inc. says a decision about a dozen years ago to use radio equipment from Freewave Technologies Inc. has allowed the company to be competitive with larger rivals such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. Mark Marsden, a VP with the company, tells Report on Wireless in a wide-ranging interview that the reliability and robustness of the Freewave products are key to its military, oil field, and municipal and utility telemetry systems. "We tend to specialize in SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) applications, with lower data rates, but more reliable RF links, so we go for robustness and range. Other radios have higher throughput, but much less RF performance," he says. With the Freewave radios, there are no issues associated with the need for clear line-of-sight or large infrastructure costs to put up towers. "In our mind, the Freewave (radio) is the RF equivalent of a sledgehammer and that’s good for us because we know that it’s going to do the job," Marsden says. Money saved on less expensive radios "is rather shortsighted if it’s going to cost you hours and hours of time" in the field," he adds. On the military side, the company provides chemical and biological threat detection systems, which when deployed transmit information from the particular site back to a central office. "We’re really looking for air quality, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, temperature, and we can send that information back in real time…On the biological side, you never know where the equipment is going to end up and what’s going to be in the way," Marsden says, highlighting the non-line-of-sight importance of the Freewave radios. "In the oil field market, it’s fairly similar (in that) you’re looking at pressures, temperatures, flows and perhaps alarm information that’s being telemetered back (to central locations). It’s large amounts of data from a lot of sites and we need 100% of our data all of the time," he says. The Edmonton company gained its knowledge of the military market in working with the Department of National Defence and its research establishment for approximately 20 years. Marsden explains, "We did a lot of contract work, automating, doing software for them and hardware development. It gave us a rather unique opportunity in this area because there aren’t really (a lot of) companies in the world that have that kind of experience. Because it was such an esoteric field before 9/11, it’s given us a real head start on the big guys. While military applications have grown substantially since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he says that civilian emergency organizations are likely to be Dycor’s biggest market in the future. He cites a recent hazardous waste plant fire in Edmonton, where sensors could have been quickly set up and then all of the data would be telemetered back to a central location to determine potential air quality concerns, as an example of the type of application the company could provide. The oil field market also represents significant revenue potential for the company as there are a large number of junior oil companies active in Alberta. Marsden says the big oil companies won’t develop smaller reserves, leaving the smaller companies to develop the smaller reservoirs. "The small oil companies can make a living off the smaller reservoirs, and wireless is really a perfect fit for them. There’s probably over 1,000 junior oil companies out there now, so there’s lots of opportunities for wireless (applications) here," he says. The use of wireless technology in the oil fields is particularly cost effective through the elimination of trenching, Marsden explains. In addition to the initial set up costs, "it’s thousands of dollars just to move the equipment to trench, and then it might be $10 per metre (in additional costs). There are number of situations where it’s just not feasible, and there’s some areas where it’s not a viable option to move equipment in there."

Freewave radios give Dycor competitive advantage over much larger rivals

News | 05/17/2005 4:00 am EDT

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