Industrial remote access!

Industrial Remote Communication: Siemens restructures industrial remote access portfolio

Megatrends such as urbanisation, globalisation, population growth and climate change are making whole new demands on politics and industry, calling for solutions which exceed the scope of classical teleservice and telecontrol systems. With a new product portfolio for mobile radio routers, Siemens is taking up this challenge, concentrating its existing remote access solutions under a new umbrella: “Industrial Remote Communication”. The changes are aimed at extending existing solutions for remote data exchange and access and developing new ones.

Whether remote accessing of distant systems, remote maintenance of components distributed across the globe or remote control of distant process stations, the application scope for solutions under the heading of teleservice and telecontrol is enormous, spanning across many different industries. “Driven by the process of increasing globalisation, but also by developments such as urbanisation and population growth, the significance of network- based technologies is on the increase”, says Hans Schmenger, Head of Product Business Development for Telecontrol at Siemens AG in Karlsruhe (D). With its new “Industrial Remote Communication” product portfolio, Siemens has concentrated its existing product offering in this field to enable the development of new remote applications.

Right from its inception, “Industrial Remote Communication” will encompass an array of existing, market tested solutions such as the Simatic-Net products, which permit data exchange or access to systems using UMTS and GPRS mobile radio networks. Solutions from Simatic TeleService, the IPC Remote Manager and the Siemens Remote Support Services also form part of the portfolio.

The benefits of these network-based solutions are many and varied: The Tele- Control Professional system, for instance, is used for telecontrol solutions in infrastructure applications such as oil and gas pipelines, water and wastewater or in the energy industry. Using what are in some cases widely differing telecommunication networks, remote monitoring points and measuring stations are linked to control centers to transmit readings and control signals.

But in production environments too, these systems can be used to ensure efficient plant monitoring and consequently energy savings, for instance through monitoring what can be very large numbers of outstations and measuring points.

Alongside these already established applications, the Siemens Industry Automation Division has also developed a number of new solutions for its new product portfolio. The high bandwidths enabled by new transmission technologies and radio standards allow the transmission of ever greater volumes of data, including even high-resolution video clips. Using these technologies, new applications are opening up in fields such as mobility technology, including video transmissions from trains, data links for automatic ticket vending machines, infotainment services and on-board internet, or proactive monitoring of vehicle technology (telemetry). Other fields of application are already in prospect for condition monitoring of wind or solar power plants and smart grid management.