Development of infrared communication in radiation protection and monitoring

Infra-red communication has many important applications in instrumentation and control. Different types of nuclear instruments are used for radiation protection and surveillance program. The application of this mode of communication in these instruments helps in monitoring of inaccessible or high radiation field areas by avoiding undue exposure to the occupational worker. The demand for remotely controlled monitoring instruments and wireless data communication in the mobile computing environment has rapidly increased. This is due to the increasing need for on-line radiological data analysis with minimum human interventions, especially so if the monitoring is in hazardous environment. The wireless communication can be achieved using different communication methodology for short and long range communication. The infrared based communication is used for different applications for short range up to 9-10 meters. The use of this mode of communication has been implemented in some of the radiation monitoring instruments developed in house. The evaluation of data communication using this mode was conducted for the systems like Environmental Radiation Monitor (ERM) and results showed that data communication error is less than 0.1% up to 10 meter distance. (author)