science

SkyWave Mobile Communications

SkyWave Mobile Communications is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand SkyWave Mobile Communications rather than just read about it. In short: SkyWave Mobile Communications is a global provider of satellite and satellite-cellular devices in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market. Skywave products help customers track, monitor and control industrial vehicles, vessels and industrial equipment.

Key takeaways

SkyWave Mobile Communications belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect SkyWave Mobile Communications to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of SkyWave Mobile Communications from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

SkyWave Mobile Communications is a global provider of satellite and satellite-cellular devices in the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market. Skywave products help customers track, monitor and control industrial vehicles, vessels and industrial equipment. Applications include: tracking the location of vehicle fleets, monitoring data from oil and gas meters, and automated flow pumps. SkyWave's satellite products communicate via Inmarsat's global satellite service. The products are mainly used in the transportation, maritime, mining, oil and gas, heavy equipment, emergency management, water monitoring, and utilities sectors.

History

SkyWave Mobile Communications was founded in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 1997. In its initial stages SkyWave relied on the research and technical expertise provided by the Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) and local government funding services to develop the first product. Some examples of SkyWave products in use include theft-prevention security measures in U.S. government ships and trucks, satellite services to U.S. government agencies, tuna buoys in the Pacific, truck tracking in the jungles of Brazil, the oil & gas industry in North America, and drinking water control in the UK. In addition, SkyWave's satellite terminals have been used to track races such as Rhino Charge 2011, the Dubai-Muscat Offshore Sailing Race in 2008, and the China Sea Race from Hong Kong to Subic Bay in 2006. On April 1, 2009, Inmarsat acquired a 19% stake in SkyWave Mobile Communications to expand presence in the SLDR (Satellite Low Data Rate) market. SkyWave used the funds to acquire GlobalWave and double its size. The SLDR market is estimated at $600m and is expected to grow. In December 2009, SkyWave launched a GLONASS-compatible product for the Russian market. The DMR-800L with GLONASS/GPS can use either or both of the navigation systems to determine location. In August 2011, SkyWave launched IsatData Pro, a low data rate service for managing and communicating with remote assets around the world. The IsatData Pro delivers up to 10,000 bytes to the device and up to 6,400 bytes from the device. Applications include vehicle telemetry information, text-messaging remote workers, maintaining up-to-date driver logs, and the remote management and control of fixed assets. In 2012, SkyWave introduced IP SCADA service to work with its IDP series terminals for remote sites. IP SCADA allows IP-based point-to-point satellite communication connections between small remote sites and SCADA systems where other communications are unavailable, unreliable, or expensive. In early January 2015, ORBCOMM completed its acquisition of SkyWave. Today, SkyWave is located in Ottawa's technology district, west of the town of Kanata, Ontario and employs over 180 people. SkyWave has designed, manufactured and shipped more than 600,000 satellite terminals to customers in the transportation, maritime, oil and gas, heavy equipment, utilities and government sectors worldwide.

Markets SkyWave sells terminals to Solution Providers who put satellite communications products and services into industry-specific applications for their customers. The following are some of the main uses for this technology: Transportation Applications:

Vehicle tracking and monitoring, fleet management Security and anti-theft monitoring Heavy equipment security and management Trailer and container tracking, rail car tracking Cold Chain Management Mining Applications:

Heavy equipment and machine tracking Remote installation sensor monitoring Water management Maritime applications:

Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) Ship Security Alerting System (SSAS) Vessel monitoring system (VMS) Vessel equipment, environment, security monitoring Commercial fishing boat and leisure marine tracking Merchant marine monitoring Buoy sensor monitoring and tracking Oil & Gas Applications:

Oil & gas pipeline and critical parameters monitoring and control Cathodic protection SCADA equipment monitoring and management Fluids monitoring Electric power valves monitoring and control Environmental monitoring Defence and Security Applications:

Personnel tracking Perimeter control Homeland and border security Blue Force Tracking, protection, monitoring, and security Utilities Applications:

Water quality and quantity monitoring Water regulation and control Real-time analysis and monitoring Emergency response alerts Metering Emergency Management

Fleet tracking Siren warning system

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with SkyWave Mobile Communications

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what SkyWave Mobile Communications claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to SkyWave Mobile Communications before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about SkyWave Mobile Communications ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of SkyWave Mobile Communications

In research: SkyWave Mobile Communications appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses SkyWave Mobile Communications in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: SkyWave Mobile Communications is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Privately held companies of Canada, Satellite Internet access, Telecommunications companies of Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for SkyWave Mobile Communications outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study SkyWave Mobile Communications in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what SkyWave Mobile Communications means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain SkyWave Mobile Communications out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is SkyWave Mobile Communications in simple terms?

Why does SkyWave Mobile Communications matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study SkyWave Mobile Communications?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on SkyWave Mobile Communications.