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An introduction to Monitoring Fundamentals strictly from the perspective of telecom network alarm management.
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Reserve Your Seat TodayThere are two ways that you can monitor temperature, the most basic is a discrete threshold alarm. This is very similar to a thermostat
where you would set a high-point threshold and a lowpoint 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.
Another type of temperature monitoring uses analog values. Analog monitoring allows you to monitor the live data at your remote sites. In this instance you would be able to see the current temperature at your remote site. You can use your analog values to send alarms based off of user configurable thresholds, allowing you to have different thresholds for low critical, low, high, and high critical temperature alarms. You would also be able to inspect the live temperature values in detail at the remote site.
Most analog temperature sensors need +12V power. In a teleco environment equipment is typically powered with -48V. You could run your temperature sensor off of commercial power, but during power outages you will lose your temperature sensor. An industry best practice is to use an RTU that will provide power your temperature sensor from a -48V power source. This ensures your temperature monitoring is online when you need it.
Another advantage of analog value alarm monitoring is the ability to monitor the escalation of the analog values. This would give you insight as to how fast the temperature is rising or dropping, allowing you to better dispatch personnel.
