On February 26 Vodafone Ukraine’s representatives made a presentation of NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) technology at ChNPP site.
NB-IoT is a licensed LTE cellular standard for data exchange between devices. Features of NB-IoT standard is optimization of connection of a large number of devices with a small amount of data transfer, efficient use of the radio frequency resource (bandwidth of one channel — 180 kHz), ultra-low power consumption by devices, allowing their operation up to 10 years without changing the battery, as well as high signal penetration.
Sergey Rybalko, Senior Master of the Radiation Safety Shop describes the possibilities of this technology usage for Radiation Safety needs: "Taking into account that this technology is not sufficiently developed not only in Ukraine but also in the world as a whole, it is more suitable for household systems than for technological system. Regarding the volume of data transmitted by this system, it is suitable for ChNPP. The volumes we have are not too big, in practice, these are text data up to hundreds of character symbols.
First of all, our concerns is that the data are transferred via "third party", that is, via some basic cell of Vodafone or another operator. If we consider a big city, the data transmission is covered by other cells and connection will be stable. But at our site we have only one cell, which even with GSM and 3G does not work very well.
Secondly, LTE covers an area of up to 5-7 kilometers. We can not connect those remote facilities, with which we have problems because LTE signal does not get them. As far as I know, in those places there are problems even with GSM.
It is also not suitable to install this system on the vehicle for the radioactive waste transportation. During movement the "connection" can be confidently divided into 10, as it becomes less stable. Besides that NB-IoT does not show the situation in real-time. The request-response, according to this network specification, will occur only in a minute”.
In Sergey's opinion, this technology can be used as duplicating the main channel of data transmission for the radiation monitoring system of ChNPP site.
“The parameters we receive from the radiation monitoring system are used by RSS Shift Supervisor as a basis for decision-making. For example, during an emergency situation, in case of blackout occurrence, the site will receive power supply from the diesel generator. It is unknown what will happen with the mobile network in such situation”.
As a summary of the meeting, ChNPP specialists proposed to Vodafone to provide the equipment (receiver and transmitter) in order to install it at one of the systems and to check the data transmission efficiency.
