UMTS rapid response real-time seismic networks: implementation and strategies at INGV
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and its evolutions are nowadays the most affordable and widespread data communication infrastructure available almost world wide. Moreover the always growing cellular phone market is pushing the development of new devices with higher performances and...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2015-12-01
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| Series: | Advances in Geosciences |
| Online Access: | http://www.adv-geosci.net/41/35/2015/adgeo-41-35-2015.pdf |
| Summary: | Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and its evolutions are
nowadays the most affordable and widespread data communication infrastructure
available almost world wide.
Moreover the always growing cellular phone market is pushing the development
of new devices with
higher performances and lower power consumption.
All these characteristics make UMTS really useful for the
implementation of
an "easy to deploy" temporary real-time seismic station.
Despite these remarkable features, there are many drawbacks that must
be properly taken in account to
effectively transmit the seismic data:
Internet security, signal and service availability,
power consumption.
<br><br>
– Internet security: exposing seismological data services and
seismic stations to the Internet
is dangerous, attack prone and can lead to downtimes in the services,
so we setup a
dedicated Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to protect all the connected
devices.
<br><br>
– Signal and service availability:
while for temporary experiment a carefull planning and an accurate site
selection can minimize the problem, this is not always the case with
rapid response networks. Moreover, as with any other leased line,
the availability of
the UMTS service during a seismic crisis is basically unpredictable.
Nowadays in Italy during a major national emergency a Committee of the Italian Civil Defense
ensures unified management and coordination of emergency activities.
Inside it the telecom companies are committed to give support to the crisis
management improving the standards in their communication networks.
<br><br>
– Power consumption:
it is
at least of the order of that of the seismic station and,
being related to
data flow and signal quality is largely unpredictable.
While the most secure option consists in adding a second independent solar power
supply to the seismic station, this is not always a very convenient
solution since it doubles the cost and doubles the equipment on site.
We found that an acceptable trade-off is to add an
inexpensive Low Voltage Disconnect (LVD) circuit
to the UMTS router power supply that switches off
the data transmission when the power is low.
This greatly reduces the probability of data loss but lowers the real-time
data availabilty. This approach guarantees on the average a satisfactory
data acquistion rate, only in very few cases and when the real-time data is
extremely important for a particular site we needed to double the power supply
on the site.
<br><br>
Overall the UMTS data transmission has been used in most temporary seismic
experiments and in all seismic emergencies happened in Italy since 2010 and
has proved to be a very cost effective approach with real-time data acquisition
rates usually greater than 97 % and all the benefits that result
from the fast integration of the temporary data in the National Network
monitoring system and in the EIDA data bank. |
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| ISSN: | 1680-7340 1680-7359 |