SummaryThis paper overcomes two key issues within radiation monitoring networks. Secure and accurate transmission of detected gamma radiation in remote areas is the first challenge. The second one is related to the robustness of transmitted signal under different fading scenarios. These issues are handled during signal transmission over worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMax) networks. The signals are experimentally captured using a 137Cs point source, a NaI (TI) detector, and an analog‐to‐digital converter with 16 MS/s. For the first issue, several algorithms are implemented for secure and efficient transmission of gamma‐based signals. These algorithms include encoding of captured signal, decoding, interleaving, and frequency transformation of modulated signal. Encoding and decoding of target signals are conducted using the Reed Solomon technique and convolutional encoding with a Viterbi decoder. A superior algorithm for channel interleaver using the combinational interleaving method is introduced. Fast lifting transform (FLT) is applied for transforming modulated signal into frequency domain. The results declare that CC = 1/2 with BPSK‐1/2 coding rate introduces a better BER of 0.00068. A higher SNR of 1.5 dB is accomplished by the combinational interleaving algorithm. For the second issue, several models are suggested for overcoming channel degradations under gamma, exponential, Poisson, and geometric fading. Closed‐form expressions that describe outage probability, bit error rate (BER), and symbol error rate (SER) are suggested. Geometric and gamma fading achieve respectively a lower BER of 0.18 and 0.48. These channels demonstrate similar channel performances at 3.6 dB. The proposed models are validated through comparison with published work. Finally, the proposed algorithms enable higher data rate transmission of detected 137Cs signals under higher robustness using WiMax networks.