Wireless: The fourth utility?
Wireless is becoming just as indispensable for day-to-day operations in the 21st century as electricity and plumbing were in the 20th. The rapid uptake of wireless devices in every strata of society has made “universal coverage” – comprehensive coverage everywhere, all the time – a necessity. As the demand for wireless capacity increases, effective in-building wireless systems will become absolutely critical.
However, the priorities for developers of office buildings, hospitals, hotels, shopping centres and other commercial structures are clearly aesthetics, efficiency and comfort. Ironically, these same features are often the enemy of wireless technology, resulting in poor coverage. Worse still, without ubiquitous wireless coverage, corporations can lose productivity, hotels experience higher vacancy numbers, hospitals reduce the quality of care and students miss out on opportunities to learn in new, more effective ways.
Instead of waiting for capacity and coverage issues to present themselves at the most inconvenient and costly time, building owners and developers should choose to safeguard their investment and provide the infrastructure necessary to solve the wireless problems of tomorrow, today. Increasingly, vendors and resellers will be called on to provide the technologies that can resolve these connectivity issues, so it is critical to understand the issues involved.
Why use in-building solutions?
It has become clear that relying on the traditional wide area network (WAN) that enables mobile communication outdoors to deliver reliable wireless coverage inside large structures is not a feasible plan. Instead, building owners and developers are looking for cost-effective, high-performance and long-term solutions for equipping existing structures and new constructions with in-building wireless systems that will ensure occupants can maintain their wireless coverage demands well into the future.
An in-building wireless system’s cabling provides the physical infrastructure on which all wireless technology will function. Engineered with the future needs of wireless operators and public safety communications requirements in mind, the indoor antennas, coaxial cables, connectors and cable management apparatus that make up this structured cabling solution work together to homogeneously flood a building with wireless signals and deflect interference from the macro network outdoors as well as competing signal frequencies inside.
Radio frequency (RF) signals originate from a base station, located either locally or remote. The base station takes bits of data and converts them to RF signals so they can be transmitted over the air (OTA) to mobile devices. When the base station is located off-site, a repeater picks up RF signals and amplifies them. Both the local base station and repeaters use a system of cables, antennas and assorted other equipment to form a distributed antenna system (DAS) which efficiently moves RF signals throughout a building creating a reliable, high-quality communications network.
