Radio communications in Dense Forest

[fordge48]

Hi all. I am working on a community water system that has its reservior up on the side of a mountain in tall dense forest. The pump station is about 1 mile away. We have no power at the reservior so will probably install a solar panel which will work because there is a clearing that the sun shines into. My question is has anyone had success with a particular radio antenna setup that is not super high power but can shoot through fairly dense foilage.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Nova5]

How long does the sun shine into the clearing?

You can look at CPE style devices. Long range wifi links. https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-300Mbps-dual-polarized-directional-CPE510/dp/B08D71HC9L?th=1

 

[SledDog]

The dense forest will be a problem with anything low power. Line of sight is what's need to most comm links. With out line of sight in a thick forest, even the high power systems will have an issue. Have you done a link budget calculation? Can you give more information on the system you are building.

 

[GaryS]

Here's where I would starts
I have used their products before and they hve good support

https://advantech-bb.com/

 

[Saffa]

Lower frequency is better for obstructed links. VHF or UHF. I would go for a licensed link running at between 1 to 5W power. Link budgets are great for unobstructed links, but when it's something like this you just have to get some trial units and do a test, it's very hard to model foliage. You ideally want a fade margin of greater than -30dBm to allow for future degradation due to more trees, wet leaves etc.

Are you just monitoring the tank level?

What RTU are you wanting to use?

You want a minimum of 200W solar panel, a high efficiency MPPT regulator and at least 100AHr of battery backup. Always over size solar for these kinds of monitoring applications. The cost of running blind and then getting someone out in the middle of the night is always much higher than the cost of extra capacity.

My go-to serial and ethernet radio is the Schneider Trio QR450. But, there are some other water guys on here that probably have more popular models for your side of gf the world.

 

[diat150]

Hi all. I am working on a community water system that has its reservior up on the side of a mountain in tall dense forest. The pump station is about 1 mile away. We have no power at the reservior so will probably install a solar panel which will work because there is a clearing that the sun shines into. My question is has anyone had success with a particular radio antenna setup that is not super high power but can shoot through fairly dense foilage.
Thanks in advance.

to save yourself some heartache you may want to get a path profile done so you can see what you are working against.


It would help to know what type of comm link you are trying to accomplish.


you can check out some of these raveon radios that operate in vhf. They will shoot far and thru dense foliage but only have serial capability due to the frequency range.


do you have cellular signal? that is an otpion but comes with a monthly cost.

 

[HoldenC]

Here is what I used at my last job. These were used over some pretty great distances including dense forest.

They are in the 900Mhz so it will do better in dense forest conditions.

Also, they run off of 12VDC, so you may be able to power them with solar and a battery a little easier.

https://data-linc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PLR580D-DA.pdf