RF Venue has announced the availability of its WaveTower software-as-a-service (SaaS) product, designed to provide system integrators and end-users with a powerful new tool in the battle against RF spectrum interference.
Opening up new revenue streams for RF managed services, offering greater centralised oversight of multi-venue systems, and providing remote troubleshooting and planning capabilities, WaveTower features small remote sensors which report back to a cloud-based web application, making it easy to manage radio spectrum usage across multiple sites and dramatically reduce incidents of interference.
As a proprietary platform designed from the ground up to allow monitoring and management of RF systems in the most streamlined and cost-effective way, WaveTower reduces significant travel and labour costs by permitting systems techs to undertake analysis and make RF spectrum changes remotely. Corporations, touring productions, and houses of worship operating in multiple locations across town or across the globe, as well as universities are among the beneficiaries of the WaveTower feature-set.
WaveTower also makes it possible to identify and circumvent longer-term problems by capturing and saving up to two months of spectrum data. This can then be assessed remotely in order to more fully understand and plan for periods in which RF spectrum is especially congested. The web application’s 24 Hour Max Hold and Average functions make it possible to gauge overall RF spectrum activity from the previous 24 hours in a single click.
Covering VHF, UHF and ISM bands at 25kHz resolution bandwidth, WaveTower comprises a connected-hardware platform that features small remote RF sensors called ‘Towers’ that continuously send RF scan data to the WaveTower web interface. Each of the Towers sport a BNC input, allowing it to be connected directly to any brand wireless microphone system or antenna to scan the venue. The devices also feature GPS modules to determine their location worldwide, along with a scanning range of nearly 3GHz.
RF Venue CEO, Chris Regan, reports that pre-launch trials have proved ‘extremely popular with system integrators, production rental A/V companies and other end-users that operate in multiple venues.’
‘We recognised a while ago that a great deal of resources were being ploughed into staying on top of changing RF spectrum across different sites. In situations where problems were occurring, integrators or contractors would historically be required to undertake several visits to a venue; for example, to do a site survey, then back again to make changes to the system configuration. But with WaveTower, a comprehensive analysis can be achieved remotely via the web, saving both time and travel expenses.’
Several leading RF solution specialists and integrators have already had the opportunity to put WaveTower through its paces, quickly identifying it as a solution that the industry has been waiting for. Mark Consiglio, National Director for Sports and Entertainment at PSAV, found WaveTower to be a significant asset during recent events.
‘We’ve been using WaveTower for the last three months in preparation for a few projects at Fenway Park in Boston,’ says Consiglio. ‘WaveTower has enabled us to capture all of the RF activity in and around the facility, and let us see that activity over a period of time. That data is invaluable because with live events, we have to get it right the first-time. By collecting this data, RF coordination has become a very easy task and events with heavy RF traffic have been executed perfectly.’
‘For 25 years, I have been envisioning and hoping for a product like WaveTower and RF Venue has made it happen,’ says Chief Technology Officer of Radio Active Designs, James Stoffo. ‘With the introduction of new consumer 600MHz band devices energising daily and the uncertainty of what the RF spectrum will look like literally tomorrow, the ability to remotely monitor the RF spectrum from afar is critical to the RF coordinator and wireless system user. So the time is exactly right for a product like WaveTower to hit the industry.’
More: www.rfvenue.com.
