Temperature Monitoring

Temperature monitoring often flies under the radar - but it's one of the most critical environmental alarms to have at any unmanned remote site. Whether temperatures spike too high or drop too low, it's vital to know the conditions your revenue-generating equipment is exposed to.

If your air conditioner fails and there's no proper monitoring in place - either for the unit itself or the site temperature - you won't know there's a problem until it's too late. By then, your equipment could overheat, shut down, or suffer permanent damage.

Temperature Monitoring 101: All You Need to Know

There are two ways that you can monitor temperature:

• Discrete Threshold Alarms: The most basic form of temperature alert.
• Analog Value Alarms: Gives you more detail into the temperature at your site.

Discrete Threshold Alarms Indicate Exceeded Thresholds

Discrete threshold alarms are very similar to a thermostat where you would set a high-point threshold and a low-point threshold. When these presets were exceeded you would get a contact closure alarm, which would translate to a basic high or low temperature alarm. The down side to this type of alarm is that if your threshold was set to 80°F, you could be at 81°F or 181°F and all you would know is that your high temperature alarm was tripped. Having greater detail would affect how you would dispatch your technicians to the site.

Analog Monitoring Gives You Real-Time Temperature Values

The other type of temperature monitoring uses analog values. Analog monitoring allows you to monitor the live data at your remote sites.

In this instance, you can view real-time temperature readings from your remote site. Using analog inputs, you can configure alarms based on custom thresholds - such as low, low-critical, high, and high-critical temperature levels. This gives you detailed insight and control over environmental conditions at your site.

Most analog temperature sensors require +12V power. But in telecom environments, equipment usually runs on -48V. While you could power your sensor using commercial power, that becomes a liability during outages - when you need monitoring the most.

A better solution (and a good overall practice) is to use an RTU like those in the NetGuardian series. These RTUs provides +12V power to your sensors directly from a -48V source. This makes sure your monitoring stays active, even when the grid goes down.

Another key benefit of using analog monitoring is trend visibility. You'll not only know the temperature, but also how fast it's rising or falling. This gives your team context so they can respond quickly and dispatch techs before damage occurs.

What You Need to Properly Monitor Temperature

It's incredibly important to monitor the temperature levels at your remote sites. To get the most detailed visibility of site temperature, you need a remote that monitors four separate analog thresholds, like the NetGuardian 832A.

Four Thresholds Matter

With four thresholds you can set separate major and minor alarms for both high and low temperatures. This gives you both an advanced warning if temperatures are starting to leave the optimum range (e.g., the air conditioner is not working right and the temperature has risen to 80°F) and a final notification when temperatures have reached the danger point (e.g., the air conditioner is not working at all, and the temperature is 100°F).

Knowing both inside and outside temperatures gives you the overall picture. Imagine if the outside temperature is 150°F and your AC stopped working, with this knowledge you know you better dispatch a technician fast as the temperature is sure to rise quickly.

Excessive heat cooks electronic equipment, even carrier-grade telecom gear. It's essential to constantly monitor temperature at your remote sites with four-threshold and live value analog alarms. Heat also damages other equipment. High temperatures will dramatically shorten the useful life of your batteries. A lead-acid battery that would last 10 years under ordinary conditions will last only a year if it's consistently operated at temperatures over 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

Use Real-World Examples to See What's at Stake

In a recent case a telecommunications company lost a remote site with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment due to the lack of temperature monitoring. With the added heat radiation of servers and equipment, the site quickly turned into an oven cooking the equipment beyond repair.

It's important to monitor the HVAC systems that maintain your remote site environment. If you can catch an air conditioning failure early, you can intervene, start repairs and restore the remote site environment before equipment goes into thermal shutdown or the site goes dark.

Don't forget to also provide a secondary power supply for HVAC systems. An often-overlooked danger of power outages is that the telecom equipment will continue to run on backup power while the air conditioning, connected only to commercial power, is out.

The equipment keeps running, the heat keeps raising, until the temperature forces a thermal shutdown.

Learn More About Remote Temperature Sensors and Environmental Monitoring