UTSP

Poor service quality in locations such as high-rise buildings, airports, multi-storey car parks and shopping centers frustrates subscribers. Deploying a system to enable the provision of seamless coverage will increase customer satisfaction and minutes of use. This translates into increased revenue for your business.

Increasing coverage to enhanced revenue is not a new concept. Service providers are constantly looking for cost-effective ways to balance coverage and quality. An in-building solution deployed in the right location guaranteed to provide a very attractive rate of return for your business.

At UTSP, we provide a total turnkey in-building solution, with the initial focus being on the evaluation of any proposal to ensure its commercial viability. We forge strategic alliances with exceptional complementary service and equipment providers. These range from global providers of fiber optic solutions through coaxial cable installation contractors to site acquisition and management firms. Our goal is to ensure that we are in a position to offer choice. We evaluate which in-building solution is right for your business needs and then implement it, with support from our partners as required. Work with UTSP to infuse world-class capabilities into your network. Let us help you to reduce operating costs and increase revenue. Our primary objective is to help our clients to maximize revenue through increased subscriber satisfaction

There are various solutions that can be implemented for a particular site. For a design approach, UTSP will select the most cost-effective solution to meet the performance criteria.

Distributed antenna­­ network:

A particularly useful application of antennas in indoor systems is the idea of distributed antennas (DAS).  The philosophy behind this approach is to split the transmitted power among several antenna elements, separated in space so as to provide coverage over the same area as a single antenna, but with reduced total power and improved reliability.  This is possible because less power is wasted in overcoming penetration and shadowing losses, and because a line-of-sight channel is present more frequently, leading to reduced fade depths and reduced delay spread (which is known to be a good indicator of the system error rate performance in wideband systems). Furthermore, the smaller coverage footprint of each antenna element provides for controlled coverage and reduces excessive interference and spillage effects.

Figure: Distributed Antenna Systems

A distributed antenna system can be implemented in several ways, a number of which are listed below.

1. Passive Distributed Antenna Systems 

The passive DAS is deployed and consist of passive components such as coaxial cable, power splitters, combiners, directional couplers, etc. Antennas that are utilized can be of wide-bandwidth to support multi-band and/or multi-system requirements. The advantage of this approach is that the network is simple and requires minimal maintenance. Moreover, it has high-power handling capacity with the possibility of infrastructure sharing between network operators. This type of network is usually driven by a single, dedicated BTS. To mitigate the effects of cable losses in wide-area deployments, however, multiple low-capacity BTSs may be deployed in the building at different locations in lieu of a single BTS. This reduces the trunking efficiency of the network but eliminates the need for active components within the distributed antenna network. This is also possible to share the same DAS between multi operators and multi bands. This will reduce the cost to the operators and disturbance to the building and tenants compared to the scenario where a multitude of DAS were deployed in the same building.

Figure: Passive Distributed Antenna System

2. Leaky feeder system   

The ultimate form of a passive distributed antenna system is a radiating cable (leaky feeder) that is a special type of coaxial cable where the screen is slotted to allow radiation along the cable length. With careful design, such cables can produce virtually uniform coverage. This type of system is best suited for applications requiring in-tunnel coverage (such as in subways). The radiating cable in this case is run along the entire length of the tunnel. The cable is either a radiating coaxial cable or radiating wire.

Figure: Leaky/radiating cable System

3. Hybrid Distributed Antenna System

For large in-buildings the single passive DAS is extended to several additional passive DAS by using fiber-fed remote units (RF amplifiers). This is the hybrid-DAS solution. The design principles and products needed to implement each DAS are the same, thereby minimizing design time and installation experience required. The hybrid solution has a very low number of easily accessible active parts (Master Unit and fiber-fed Remote Units) resulting in a high MTBF and system availability.

Figure: Hybrid Distributed Antenna System

4. Fiber Optic Solution

In this method, RF signals are converted to optical signals before being transmitted to distribution units via optical fibers. Single-mode and multi-mode fibers can be used but multi-mode fiber requires frequency conversion before RF- to-optic conversion. The fiber optic solution is ideal for wide-area deployments such as in buildings with extensive floor areas and high-rise office buildings. The installation cost can be well contained if the existing optical fiber infrastructure within a building can be re-used. This solution is also useful for expanding on an existing distributed antenna system that is operating on coaxial solutions. Little disruption is imposed on the existing network in this case because only a small signal (tapped out using an imbalance coupler) is necessary to drive the fiber network. Monitoring of the system is achieved through sending back a signal via the BTS to the OMC.