For this issue of EET&D, we are pleased to spotlight Kathy Nelson, a "powherful force," who leads industry relations and product marketing for Ondas Networks. With 25 years of experience as a telecommunications engineer in the electric utility space, Nelson has both witnessed - and participated in creating - the myriad changes the industry has undergone – especially over the past decade.
When Kathy Nelson recently joined Ondas Networks as the director of technical product marketing and industry relations, she went from her role with Great River Energy, which focused on the utility space, to a position that serves five different critical infrastructure verticals — electric utilities, oil & gas, water, rail & transportation, and government/ military. For Ondas, Nelson’s primary role is to educate those working in these mission-critical verticals on the IEEE 802.16s standard that her company uses in its technology and products.
Introduced in 2017, this narrow channel communications standard was developed with input from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Utilities Technology Council (UTC), and several utility companies. The IEEE 802.16s standard was designed to operate in private radio frequency (RF) spectrum critical infrastructure industries have access to, as opposed to standards such as LTE, WiMAX, etc. that are designed for broadband spectrum, which critical infrastructure entities typically do not have access to. According to Nelson, this is the only standard that was designed for critical infrastructure industries and not for the consumer industry. It is also a standard on which her company continually works to enhance and improve. To inform her customers and industry partners about the standard, Nelson works closely with trade associations in each of the verticals. She speaks at industry conferences, delivers webinars and white papers and publishes articles about the standard in trade publications.
Nelson draws upon her expertise in the electric energy sector while learning her way around the verticals in which she had not worked, before Ondas. “I am enjoying working with the four other verticals which are new to me,” says Nelson. “The communications side of each is similar to those in the utility space, but the equipment that’s hanging on the other end of the communications network is different.”
While she considers herself more of an introvert, Nelson enjoys interacting with Ondas’ customers and seeing first-hand how they are deploying the company’s technology. “Meeting with the ‘boots on the ground,’ I am able to get a better sense of how they use our technology. Just being able to help them do their jobs better, and listening to what they say is a great learning opportunity,” says Nelson. While all of these meetings are educational; some come with a side of adventure. For instance, Nelson recently visited an oil field, and she is planning to visit a rail switchyard soon.
Although the utility industry, along with the other verticals on which Nelson is now focused are mostly made up of men, Nelson believes the industries are starting to attract more diversity. When she speaks at conferences, she emphasizes the significant role women and people of color play in adding value to the industry. To those just entering the workforce or looking to get the most out of their professions, Nelson encourages them to join trade organizations or industry- related programs. As Nelson explains, workers who are engaged in their industries will gain more than knowledge of their trades. “If people get involved with trade associations and attend industry events, their careers and impact on their industries can be greater than their jobs,” asserts Nelson.
With STEM and STEAM programs gaining popularity, there is a greater awareness that parents and teachers can do a better job of encouraging girls to explore math and science. But when she began her career 25 years ago, Nelson didn’t have the option of a STEM program. So, what was her motivation to pursue an engineering degree? Nelson says it started with her father. “My dad was a professor of engineering technology, which is like engineering, without calculus,” explains Nelson. “He also wrote textbooks for engineering programs, so I grew up with an innate awareness of engineering and what the field required.” Nelson further explains that she and her two older sisters understood the importance of formal education, so there was never a question about whether she or her sisters would attend college. Deciding on majors, turned out to be a different issue. “Dad always wanted an engineer. Both of my older sisters started out majoring in engineering, but they each ended up switching to English majors. I started out studying architecture, but I switched to engineering,” says Nelson.
Not only was she encouraged at home to pursue careers in math and science, but Nelson also had teachers, who inspired her love of math, beginning as early as the second grade, and through her senior year of high school. In college, Nelson had a Power Systems professor, whose approach to teaching, further solidified her decision to enter the utility space as an engineer. “He made our power systems classes fun, interesting and lively. I worked with many engineers at Great River Energy who also went into the energy sector because of him and his classes.”
When she first went to work for Green River Energy, Nelson had a hiring manager who was also her champion. Steering her towards telecommunications engineering, as opposed to substation engineering, the manager told her, “60 cycles has been the same for 100 years; it doesn’t change. Telecommunications is much more interesting. Technology changes all the time.”
Over the years, Nelson has continued to receive encouragement from colleagues. After she had been in the industry for several years, Nelson got involved with the Utilities Technology Council (UTC), sitting on its board of directors for nearly 10 years. The support she received from her fellow board members was a welcome surprise. “I would go to those meetings, where I felt comfortable vocalizing my thoughts, and the board was open to my ideas. I received feedback like, ‘You have a really good perspective,’ and over time, my colleagues suggested I move into a leadership position within UTC. That support helped shape my view of leadership and the fact that I wanted to be an industry leader.” Nelson pursued leadership with UTC, serving as its public policy division chair for four years. In 2017, Nelson was named chair of the UTC board through May 2018. She left UTC’s board in August of 2018 when she went to work for Ondas.
As much as she relishes what she is learning about other mission-critical industries and helping companies improve their processes by adopting IEEE 802.16s, Nelson will always have an affinity for the utility sector and those within the sector who have taught her valuable lessons about leadership and human interaction. “Utilities may not be the sexiest places to work, but there is so much technological innovation changing the way the industry runs that I think it’s become one of the most exciting industries,” says Nelson. “I was able to experience many of those changes and have been given opportunities to explore so many different things throughout my career. I have no regrets about the work I have done. And now, after so many years in one industry, I am happy to have begun this newest chapter with Ondas.”
IEEE 802.16S STANDARD – THE ANSWER
FOR MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATION NEEDS
The electric utility industry is undergoing a transformation to modernize and secure the power grid. Grid modernization involves the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Mission-Critical Internet of Things (MC-IoT). The challenge, however, is that IIoT and MC-IoT require increased connectivity provided by secure and reliable wireless field area networks in order to communicate with remote monitoring and control technologies. Unfortunately, most available network solutions were not designed to support the continuously changing demands of the MC-IoT.
The electric utility and other critical infrastructure industries need standard technology options to deploy highly reliable field area networks on private radio frequency (RF) spectrum. While wireless standards have existed for broadband spectrum, it is only recently that there has been standard technology that could be used on frequency channels less than 1.25 MHz wide. The smallest channel size for LTE is 1.4 MHz, and the smallest channel size for standard WiMAX is 1.25 MHz. Most critical infrastructure entities do not have access to these wideband channels which are high cost, leaving most of them faced with adopting proprietary technology solutions or to rely upon commercial carriers which do not have the reliability and availability for mission-critical applications, such as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). Additionally, standards such as LTE, were designed for the consumer industry, not mission-critical industries.
Proprietary solutions, regardless of the size of the technology vendor or provider, pose multiple challenges to utilities. While a proprietary solution may meet demands and provide a sound design at the time of purchase, utilities face the constant risk that the vendor may go out of business or discontinue their product line, leaving customers unsupported.
The Evolution of a Standard
IEEE 802.16s effort was a grassroots effort launched for electric utilities looking for a standard technology that could be used in narrow channel bands they possess access to, typically purchased on the secondary market (700 MHz A band, 217 – 219 MHz, 1.4 GHz, etc.). These spectrum bands do not have enough bandwidth to support other standard technologies.
Public broadband wireless technologies are evolving towards higher speeds and smaller cell sizes and are focused on consumer applications. The public Internet of Things (IoT) services such as Narrow Band LTE (NB-LTE) are being deployed with a focus on consumer market applications and are not well suited for MC-IoT applications.
The IEEE 802.16s standard is designed for the mission-critical private broadband wireless market. It provides multimegabit throughput using relatively narrow channel size (between 100 kHz to 1.20 MHz) and long range (e.g., 25 miles and beyond) to minimize spectrum acquisition and network infrastructure cost.
IEEE 802.16s is optimized for mission-critical remote-control applications, not the consumer market. Many mission-critical applications such as SCADA require more data to go from the remote devices, such as a substation, to a master device. This is a reverse asymmetrical data flow and is nearly opposite to the consumer market which is heavily driven by data that goes from the network to the remote device, such as in streaming Netflix videos, etc. IEEE 802.16s addresses this by adopting Time Division Duplex (TDD) with a downlink to uplink traffic ratio up to 1:10.
Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) vs. Time Division Duplex (TDD)
LTE and several proprietary technologies are based on FDD because that spectrum has historically been paired. To understand the difference between FDD and TDD, think of FDD as a freeway where there is the same number of traffic lanes going into and out of a city. During morning rush hour, all the traffic lanes going into the city are clogged, and traffic is moving slower due to congestion, while the traffic lanes going out of the city are mostly empty. It would be more effective if some of those lanes could be configured so that more of them could go into the city because there is more traffic. TDD allows for that “traffic lane” configuration.
The number of “lanes” moving in each direction can be configured for each specific system, making more efficient use of the RF spectrum. This is very important when the RF spectrum is limited and is the basis of IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.16s.
IEEE 802.16s Highlights
While IEEE 802.16 is a good base for an efficient wireless technology, changes were needed to adapt it and make it even more efficient in narrower channels, namely reducing the overhead so more user data could be transmitted. The standard is designed so it can be reverse asymmetrical, meaning more throughput for upstream than downstream, which is how most mission-critical systems function although it can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, depending on system requirements.
Several changes were made to IEEE 802.16 to make it more efficient for narrower channels. IEEE 802.16s supports channel sizes between 100 kHz and 1.20 MHz, in 50 kHz increments. The sampling clock is reduced to accommodate narrower channel bandwidth resulting in a reduction in subcarrier spacing. The number of sub-channels is reduced to avoid excessive subcarrier spacing reduction, and IEEE 802.16s uses an adjacent subcarrier per sub-channel allocations scheme known as Band Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), which is more efficient in smaller channel sizes than Partial Use of Sub-Carriers (PUSC) which is commonly used in IEEE 802.16 Air interface protocol changes were made in IEEE 802.16s to make better use of spectrum:
- Convolutional Turbo Coding (CTC) is mandatory. This lowers the Forward Error Correction (FEC) Code thresholds relative to Convolutional Coding (CC).
- Make 64 QAM 5/6 a mandatory scheme to enable higher frequency utilization (30 bytes per slot) if conditions allow.
- Use single zone with band AMC in both downlink and uplink directions to avoid the overhead of multiple zones scheme.
- Support new frame durations of 10 ms, 12.5 ms, 20 ms, 25 ms, 40 ms, and 50 ms to reduce per frame overhead for narrower channels while maintaining the IEEE 802.16 standard 5 ms frame duration for use at higher ends of the channel bandwidth.
- Support of Cyclic Prefix values of 1/8, 1/16 and 1/32 to reduce overhead if multipath conditions allow.
- Supports DL:UL ratio in the range 10:1 to 1:10 to support asymmetrical and reverse asymmetrical applications.
What Does This Mean for Electric Utilities?
As more data is required and more intelligence and processing for utility networks moves to the edge of the distribution grid, the capability of communications networks needs to increase. This newly developed, highly efficient, narrower channel standard enables utilities to deploy mission-critical applications on private, licensed, standard, and secure wireless communications networks.
Kathy Nelson is the director of technical product marketing and industry relations at Ondas Networks, formerly Full Spectrum, where she leads Ondas' industry relations and product marketing across all industrial verticals including electric utilities, oil and gas, water, transportation and government. Nelson has 25 years of experience as a telecommunications engineer in the electric utility industry, focusing primarily on SCADA and land-mobile radio telecommunications systems. She served as UTC Chairwoman of the Board in 2017-2018, ending a tenure of nearly 10 years on UTC's board of directors, four of those years as public policy division chair. Nelson has a B.S. in electrical engineering from North Dakota State University and is a registered professional engineering in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.
