Keeping airplanes and their passengers safe is a high priority for tower companies. To ensure that towers are visible to pilots, obstruction lighting systems are paramount, and are required for towers to function 24/7/365. For over 25 years, Westell has been providing a number of monitoring systems that alert the tower company if there is a systems failure, ensuring the lights on towers always stay on.
Marking and lighting is required for all structures exceeding 200 feet above ground level. There are hefty fines for failing to report outages. To ensure tower companies maintain safety, Westell’s Intelligent Site Management devices support tower light monitoring, as well as remote site management beyond lighting systems.
“We have solutions that go all the way from the most intelligent, most automated tower lighting systems — where we are collecting information and even issuing controls — down to the most simplistic lighting systems,” Joel Tamkin, Vice President ISM Product Marketing at Westell, told Inside Towers.
In the Event of a Tower Lighting Outage
The FAA requires a notification for problems that affect top or flashing obstruction lights for more than 30 minutes. The operator must indicate the location, the type and height of the structure, any FCC registration numbers, and the estimated return to service date.
The FAA then issues a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM), which is made available to pilots and aircrews to ensure they are aware of the potentially un-lit obstruction. The FCC takes an active role as well and will levy heavy fines, starting at $10,000, for non-compliance.
“Because these problems need to be detected and reported quickly, automated monitoring becomes very important,” Tamkin said. “Historically, operators might rely on landlords, local residents or regular inspections to detect these issues. Westell helps operators upgrade to intelligent tower light monitoring, so the process can be optimized and streamlined. Outages can be prioritized based on their impact to air traffic and compliance with regulations.”
Monitoring Complex Lighting Systems
At least seven major classes of towers are used regularly for telecom antennas. There are more than 25 sub-classifications of those towers, which are based on height, location, required lighting intensity, and other factors. The monitoring requirements vary based on the type of tower and lighting system, as well as which component of the lighting system has been compromised.
“Tower operators must not only ensure these structures are properly marked and lit, but they must follow strict requirements for reporting and repairing outages of obstruction lights,” Tamkin explained.
Other human and environmental factors add to the complexity of obstruction lighting strategies. Various systems are deployed to automate lighting operations to reduce annoyance to human neighbors and even to prevent interference with migratory bird populations. Detecting an oncoming airplane and turning on the lights and then turning them off after it passes requires sophisticated systems that have additional monitoring and reporting guidelines.
“For those complex obstruction lighting systems, when our monitoring system detects that automation isn’t performing properly, detectors aren’t working, a lighting outage, it will sound an alarm and report it,” Tamkin said. “Operators often need detailed information about the operation of their obstruction lighting systems in order to respond to outages.”
Eliminating Quarterly Lighting Inspections
The FCC mandates quarterly lighting inspections (QLI) be performed on every tower, which represents an ongoing cost for tower operators. Recently, the FCC has recognized that qualified, real-time monitoring systems coupled with onboard lighting controller diagnostics can fill this need, reducing the physical inspection requirement to an annual task.
“Westell solutions were some of the first to prove these capabilities and have helped our customers to obtain waivers of the QLI requirement, allowing them to reduce their lighting inspection costs by up to 75 percent,” Tamkin said.
The Vendor-Agnostic Advantage
Lighting vendors, themselves, offer monitoring of their units with a 4G modem and an online portal. But going with the lighting vendor’s system has its own limitations. This requires the tower company to use only the lighting monitoring equipment provided by that tower lighting vendor.
“As a vendor-agnostic solution provider, Westell’s technology can work in any tower site with any lighting system,” Tamkin said. “We are open from a management and monitoring perspective and provide them with a consistent solution that will work in every site that has lighting,” Tamkin said.
With today’s heterogeneous networks, various generations of lighting systems from the same vendor may not operate consistently with each other. Westell’s solution normalizes the data collection and offers more flexible connectivity options than the lighting vendors, according to Tamkin. “Our customers can rely on consistent capabilities regardless of the origin or vintage of the site,” Tamkin said.
More Than Monitoring
Most of Westell’s Intelligent Site Management devices support tower light monitoring, including its RMC, DMX, RMX, and EdgeLink series of products. Westell products also support additional remote site management beyond lighting systems.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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