LTE provides distinct benefits in meeting the network requirements for autonomous applications in open pit and underground mining with its predictability and Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities.
Experience at multiple sites worldwide, however, has highlighted a number of challenges around the cost of ‘filling’ in shadows with more LTE infrastructure, limited uplink bandwidth and needing a L2 fabric on top of LTE’s L3 architecture, especially when mission critical performance of your wireless network is a requirement.
Leveraging the multi-radio meshing capability of Rajant’s InstaMesh technology, the 3D-P Hybrid LTE/InstaMesh® Osprey Intelligent Endpoint® (IEP) solves those issues.
Guarantee performance of your LTE deployment
The Osprey guarantees performance of your LTE network at 3 levels:
- By providing reliable and complete coverage – the meshing capability of the Hybrid Osprey allows mobile equipment to remain connected, even when outside LTE coverage or shadowed at the working face, through meshing with connected LTE neighbors or Rajant infrastructure.
- By addressing the limited uplink bandwidth – the hybrid Osprey analyzes each connection on a packet by packet basis, to determine the best route for that particular traffic, consistently sending the traffic over the best available link.
- By creating a native Layer 2 network support – While many mining applications today still require a Layer 2 network, LTE is built upon a Layer 3 architecture. The Hybrid Osprey simplifies providing a Layer 2 solution by leveraging the integrated RPT tunneling which is native to Rajant’s Instamesh.
Plan for autonomy
With its non-event roaming capability, the hybrid LTE/InstaMesh Osprey ensures your autonomous equipment has mission critical connectivity including high throughput, low latency and redundancy. Where connectivity to the network is king, the Hybrid solution stands alone. The solution provides the ultimate in redundancy, ensuring delivery of every packet.
When required by the network design, the Hybrid Osprey can also support the segregation of your network, allowing the autonomous application to reside on a stand-alone technology, while the other on-board applications reside on their own network, providing additional control of the autonomy traffic.
What Rajant has to say
‘We get asked a lot about supporting LTE. Designed for outdoor wide-area networks, LTE can provide benefits through a centralized infrastructure, but lacks the dynamic resiliency to ever-changing environments provided by Rajant Kinetic Mesh®. The hybrid solution designed by our premier partner, 3D-P, overcomes the limitations of LTE to bring the capabilities of both cellular and mobile peer-to-peer technologies into a single product offering”, shares Paul Hellhake, Rajant’s Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder. “Adding Rajant Kinetic Mesh extends and effectively expands LTE’s capabilities in highly mobile, increasingly autonomous operations. LTE cannot provide coverage throughout an entire industrial site, such as mining, transportation, shipping, and utilities, and this is the most mission-critical connectivity problem Rajant solves. Added benefits of a hybrid networking solution are increased flexibility, ease of deployment, and robust upstream speeds industrial operations need to run multiple mission-critical apps, like CCTV and real-time machine guidance.”
To learn more about the Osprey, contact us today.
