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FreeWave Technologies is one of the leading manufacturers of reliable, high-performance spread spectrum and licensed radios for critical data transmission. The company recently announced that it has been selected by Petrobas for the automation of several SCADA applications in Peru and a number of other countries.

Petrobas Peru is the sixth largest energy company in the world and currently has many FreeWave radios operating in the field and the network continues to grow. The company also uses FreeWave FGR09CSU serial radios and several HTplus Ethernet radios at its oil collection sites, treatment plants, water ejection sites and compression stations.

Before they could select FreeWave radios, Petrobas Peru did a pilot test with a competing brand of wireless radios and found out that large amounts of ambient noise were present and there was also no guarantee of reliable or consistent links. In a release, Carlos Cieza, project engineer, at Petrobas Peru said that "Without working links we would have to consider the pilot a failure. We had some FreeWave FGR09CSU Series radios that were used for other SCADA applications, so we decided to install them in an attempt to save the pilot. After a quick set-up, we were able to establish a link almost immediately. We were extremely impressed with the flexibility and reliability of FreeWave's radios, especially considering how difficult it had been to set up the other vendor's radios."

When they tested the FreeWave board level FGR09CSU 900 MHz serial radios, they found that it provided them with better performance and versatility in the applications and there was hardly any LOS. After deploying the board level radios from FreeWave also provide a cost-effective solution that gives users the option of incorporating wireless communications into a wide variety of applications.

Roy Rosado, business development executive for Latin American Markets at FreeWave Technologies said that "The Petrobas Peru installation is a perfect example of how our radios work in some of the world's most challenging environments. The FreeWave radios are located in a coastal environment in Piura, Peru where the local average temperature is 95 degrees. Small rivers and large amounts of rain in the summer add to the Line-of-Site (LOS) difficulty. Yet, with all these complications, we have seen our radios continually transmit critical data and seamlessly integrate into the SCADA system for Petrobas Peru."