Hyderabad, Aug 26 (UNI) Astra Microwave Products Ltd, the country's leading provider of microwave wireless communications technologies for use in defence, space and civilian applications, today announced that it has received order worth Rs 25.5 crore from Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).

The order was for the supply, installation and commissioning of unmanned automatic remote weather stations in 550 locations across India, a company statement said.

The weather stations, scheduled to be installed in 2009, would feed live data via satellite to the Met Department's central servers on a 24X7 basis, the statement said.

Each automated weather station would consist of Data logging and transmission system, GPS receiver and transmitter, Antenna, Solar Panel, Remote display unit, Sensors for temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, solar radiation, rainfall, soil moisture and temperature among others, it added.

Astra Managing Director B Malla Reddy said, ''Precise weather forecasting is of crucial significance to groups such as farmers, fishermen, transporters, traffic controllers, public and emergency service providers -- indeed to anyone whose profession is dependent on or affected by the weather. we see our automatic weather stations as an enabler for India at large.'' UNI VA AKM SG GC1458