Smart Tower®

Communication and power industry towers are continually stressed due to various equipment and environmental loading conditions (thermal, wind, seismic, etc.). To ensure the structural integrity and safety of these towers, periodic inspections are required by skilled inspection personnel. Inspections may also be necessary shortly after a climatological or seismic event.

Various structural health monitoring (SHM) solutions have been employed to eliminate the need for scheduled inspections, but they are too complex for maintenance teams to deploy and difficult to scale for large tower asset groups. Smart Tower® is a proprietary, remote SHM system enabled by cloud-data intelligence to support tower maintenance and asset management.

The Smart Solution for Tower Condition Monitoring

The Smart Tower solution is comprised of:

Sensor Module (SM) – Produces tower displacement, twist and sway measurements via sensor system ruggedized for tower top installation
Ground Control Unit (GCU) – For external power and wireless data communication at the tower base
FDH Cloud Services Portal – Intelligent tower data visualization with capabilities for threshold alerts and historical data analytics

Out of Sight, But Not Overlooked ...

Leveraging remote sensing with data transmitted wirelessly to our secure cloud servers, Smart Tower provides direct measurements of tower motions and enables analysis of conditions including (but not limited to),

Deterioration: Expose deterioration issues by comparing responses over time
Damage: Assess structures for damage after storms and prioritize inspections; detect permanent deformation
Loading: Calculate antenna loading capacity being used
Stress: Calculate stresses using displacements with known structural model
Oscillation: Detect wind-induced oscillations, e.g., vortex shedding
Fatigue: Determine number of cycles exceeding fatigue stress limits
Damping: Determine damping characteristics
Activity: Detect ancillary activities like unauthorized climbers

All of these capabilities enable tower operators to maintain their asset portfolios more efficiently through data-driven insights and diagnoses.

Contact us today to make Smart Tower an integral part of your maintenance and capital improvement programs.