--- title: How do I get real-time gas alerts from workers in hazardous areas to my control room? date: 2026-10-22T17:00:00+11:00 author: Pradhyum Ramkumar canonical_url: "https://celona.io/resources/how-do-i-get-real-time-gas-alerts-from-workers-in-hazardous-areas-to-my-control-room" section: Resources --- # How do I get real-time gas alerts from workers in hazardous areas to my control room? When a gas monitor trips in a hazard zone, your control room should know right away. Here’s how Celona private 5G links the monitors your crews already carry to the people who can respond. By **Team Celona** · October 22, 2026 Short answer: connect them. Put the gas monitors your crews already carry on a private 5G network that covers the whole plant, and your control room sees every alarm the moment it trips, along with who it is and where they are. Here at Celona, we hear the same thing from refineries, petrochemical plants and processing sites. The safety gear is there. The connectivity isn't. We put together a live demo to show what changes when that safety data can actually get out of the hazard zone. ## **Worker safety challenges** ### How it's handled today Walk through any hazard zone and you'll see workers carrying personal O2 and H2S monitors from companies like Honeywell and Rockwell. The gear works. The problem is that it works alone. When a monitor goes off, it beeps on the worker's belt and that's where it ends. The worker has to recognize the alarm, get out and radio it in. Nobody in the control room knows until the worker, who might already be in distress, notifies them. ### What makes it hard to fix If you've worked in a refinery or a chemical plant, you already know why these areas aren't connected. There are three things working against you. 1. **Metal everywhere.** Tanks, pipe racks, columns and steel structures block and reflect RF signals. Coverage that looks fine on a floor plan falls apart once you're standing between two process units. Wi-Fi radios, with their lower transmit power, can offer spotty coverage at best in these areas. 2. **Hazardous locations.** Anything going into a classified area has to be intrinsically safe or C1D2 rated and ruggedized. That narrows your choice of radios and devices, and running new cable through those areas is slow and expensive. 3. **Remote sites.** Many of these plants are out where public cellular coverage is poor to begin with, so you can't count on the carrier network to fill the gaps. Put those together and it's no surprise that most hazard zones have no connectivity at all. Safety data stays stranded on the worker's belt. ## **The proposed solution** Three pieces working together: 1. **Bluetooth sensors.** The O2 monitors, H2S monitors and other industrial sensors from Honeywell, Rockwell and others that you already have on site. 2. **A** [**Pepperl+Fuchs**](https://www.pepperl-fuchs.com/en/landingpage/explosion-protection/smart-ex-gp28726) **C1D2 ruggedized handheld.** It's rated for hazardous areas and acts as the gateway, picking up sensor readings over Bluetooth. 3. **A Celona private 5G network.** It carries the data from the handheld back into your OT network, and sometimes to a cloud-based application, wherever the safety dashboard runs. ![Celona sensor flowchart titles only transparent V2](https://celona.io/volumes/images/_3200x626_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/65508/celona-sensor-flowchart-titles-only-transparentV2.webp) The moment a sensor trips, the control room sees the alert, who it is and where they are. The same handheld also gives the worker two-way voice with the control room, and with AI behind it, step-by-step guidance in an emergency. This setup also solves the connectivity problems. Private 5G radios transmit at higher power, and devices can hold a connection at low signal strength, so you cover a metal-heavy site with far fewer access points. Unlike a public cellular tower, the radios can be set up precisely where you need them, including [**C1D2 ruggedized radios**](https://celona.io/4g-5g-access-points) for hazardous zones, making sure every square foot of the site is covered reliably. The Pepperl+Fuchs handheld is also C1D2 rated and certified to work on a Celona private 5G network, so the worker can reliably use it anywhere on site. And because the network runs on dedicated spectrum you control, it doesn't depend on the carrier showing up at a remote site. The other use-case could be the plants are really large, and the new contractors during the turn-around time, or in emergency situations, they are lost because its new facilities. The AI asist voice or real human voice based device can help in those situations. ## What's the impact in your OT environment? Once the data gets out, it changes the safety picture completely. With private 5G, the reading reaches the control room in real time, tagged to that worker, so the supervisor can locate them and send help right away. Readings are collected over time, so you can spot an area creeping toward its threshold before it trips. The worker can talk to the control room from the hazard zone, and a new hire who doesn't know the evacuation route can be guided out step by step. **No rip and replace.** Your existing sensors stay, and the data lands in your OT network where your team already works. **One network to maintain.** Safety sensors, voice and automation share it. That's what IT/OT convergence should look like on the plant floor. ### Where Celona fits in [**Celona Orion**](https://celona.io/platform-overview) brings every wireless network on your site into one fabric, so safety traffic gets the deterministic performance and security it needs. Wi-Fi comes in the same subscription at no added cost. Every MHz, working as one. [**Security is built in for OT**](https://celona.io/aerloc): SIM-based identity, micro-segmentation for OT traffic, and IT/OT air-gap built into the fabric. We write the entire software stack in-house and deliver it from a single trusted supply chain. And Orchestrator, our agentic operations plane, gives your team one place to run all of it. ## Bottom line Your safety program is only as good as the data that reaches the people who can act on it. Connect the workers in your hazardous areas, and nobody in your plant is alone with an alarm. Want to see the demo for yourself? [Reach out](https://celona.io/contact-us) to the Celona team, and we'll walk you through it. / Related resources ## Go deeper More resources on private wireless for the enterprise. [Videos ### AI-Native Network Management Demo: Part 1 See how Celona Orion turns a two-hour manual report into a two-minute AI conversation. Aug 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/ai-native-network-management-demo-part-1) [Videos ### AI-Native Network Management Demo: Part 2 See how Celona Orion diagnoses and fixes a device connectivity issue in minutes, no support ticket required. Aug 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/ai-native-network-management-demo-part-2) [Research Papers ### Roaming Performance Analysis and Comparison between Wi-Fi and Private Cellular Network, Published in IEEE ICNC 2024 This paper quantifies service interruption and handover delays when devices roam with in Wi-Fi and private CBRS networks. It highlights architectural gaps in current dual-RAT behavior and proposes mechanisms to achieve sub-second transitions for latency-sensitive applications. Jan 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/roaming-performance-analysis-and-comparison-between-wi-fi-and-private-cellular-network-published-in-ieee-icnc-2024) [Access all Resources ](https://celona.io/resources)