Emcom Wireless provides mission-critical communication system to Bloodhound land speed record

Johannesburg, 27 May 2014

Should Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) driver Andy Green run into any trouble while travelling at 1 609km/h, it is imperative that he is still able to communicate with the Bloodhound control centre.

Often overlooked as a critical component of any project, his communications should be the last system on the most complex land vehicle ever built to fail.

"You often see or feel the lack of radio communications where there is a crisis or systems have failed," says Sipho Tony Sibanda, business development manager of Emcom Wireless, the South African firm that sponsors the radio communications for the project.

Along with cellphone provider MTN, and Poynting Antennas, Emcom has imprinted a unique South African footprint on the Bloodhound adventure, by designing, installing and maintaining a full communications hub around the Hakskeenpan in the Northern Cape - where there previously has been no communications infrastructure.

It has been agreed by the Bloodhound management team that should communications on the car fail, then the car would not be allowed to run. That is why Emcom's radio systems have been selected as a mission-critical aspect of both the 2015 and 2016 Bloodhound World Land Speed Record attempts.

Emcom is supplying and equipping the Bloodhound car with its state-of-the-art Tier III Digital Mobile Radio (DMR), which would be linked to the command and control centre. "Our DMR solution will provide real-time voice and data communications and allow the command centre to not only talk to the driver, but monitor his vital statistics like heart rate and breathing rate, as well as give feedback on the performance of the vehicle throughout the attempt," explained Sibanda.

The radio technology has been imported at a cost of R1.5 million from New Zealand, and would be put in use for the first time ever in South Africa on the Bloodhound project.

According to Sibanda, the system is perfect for reliable, secure voice and data transmission over a wide area and would benefit the Bloodhound project by ensuring there is seamless relay of information between the driver and the team members at every point of the high-speed attempt. This will not only safeguard the driver, but also allow detailed accurate analysis of all data generated in real-time at any stage of the record attempt, during and after the run.

The BloodhoundSSC team is expected to be on the Hakskeenpan in August 2015, where they will attempt to break the current WLSR of 763.035mph (1 227.986km/h) currently held by Green. After that, they will return to the Bloodhound Centre in Bristol, UK, for further engineering on the car. They will then return to South Africa in August 2016, where they will attempt to break the 1 000mph (1 609km/h) barrier.

Emcom Wireless

Emcom Wireless provides professional mission-critical radio communications solutions. It designs, implements, supports and manages mission-critical two-way radio infrastructure across a number of applications. Emcom Wireless' success results from long-term relationships with its customers and manufacturers of the technology it uses. Reliability, commitment, flexibility and excellence are some of the values that define the company as a trusted leader in the African professional radio communications industry.

Working on the backbone of wireless two-way radio infrastructure, the company is able to design, implement, integrate and manage secure wireless communications across a number of mediums such as broadband, fixed-line and wireless environments. Emcom currently provides communication solutions for a range of clients in the public safety, disaster management, local government, transport, mining, agriculture and power and other utilities sectors in over 30 African countries.

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