World market leader in radar measurement technology

Radar has revolutionized level measurement. Already in the early 1970’s, the petrochemical industry used the first radar sensors for level measurement in large storage tanks. But this measuring technique required tremendous engineering effort and was not cost-effective enough for use in process automation. That’s why in1989 VEGA started working on a radar instrument with pulse technology, the first company to do so. Two years later VEGA introduced to the world the first pulse radar level gauge ready for mass production. This was the starting signal for the worldwide triumph of radar measurement in process engineering.

Success story
VEGA is proud of its pioneering role in radar measurement technology, which is documented by an impressive number: today, 18 years after the introduction of the first VEGA radar measuringinstrument, over 200,000 radar sensors from VEGA are at work in all kinds of level applications worldwide.

Shortly before the beginning of the 21st century, one name was the talk of the town among experts: eric®. That was the name of the world’s first 2-wire radar instrument, which VEGA launched on the market in 1997. eric® gave level measurement technology a completely new face. It was equipped with a digital signal processing system that was quite unique due to its very low energy requirement. And on top of that, the little instrument with the pleasant human features proved to be a real all-rounder: its fields of application extended from the chemical industry to food production to the level measurement of liquid steel. In short: many industries were just waiting for something like eric® to come along. So they deployed eric® in numerous applications where the use of radar had been technically unfeasible or too expensive until then. eric® thus brought VEGA to the top of the world market within a very short time.

But eric® also had his limits: the application area of radar level measurement was still limited mainly to liquids. That changed in 2004, when VEGA succeeded in boosting the sensitivity of radar sensors by a thousandfold. VEGA engineers developed new, powerfully focusing horn and parabolic antenna systems to enable measurement in narrow and very tall silos. At the same time, the signal processing was adapted to the typical features of bulk solids containers. Thus equipped, the radar sensors were well prepared to deal with the extremely difficult process conditions in the bulk solids industry: pneumatic filling, dust, noise, buildup and steep repose angles were suddenly no longer a problem. Where other measuring techniques showed considerable weaknesses, the radar sensor VEGAPULS 68 ushered in a brand new era in bulk solids measurement. In 2007, the sensor got backing from its little brother VEGAPULS 67. Together, they are an unbeatable team ready to take on any challenge in the area of bulk solids.