AsiaPAC must plan for smart cities
May 10, 2017: With the race on to lead the world in delivering smart cities, AsiaPAC governments, operators and integrators need to take a fresh look at how they can provide ubiquitous wireless connectivity both indoors and out, says Ranplan Wireless. Ranplan warns that the traditional approach of designing wireless networks from the outside in will not be able to meet the increasing demand for greater capacity and coverage across dense urban environments.
Instead, at CommunicaAsia later this month, Ranplan will be showcasing its latest iBuildNet suite of planning and optimization tools, which enable coordinated design and roll-out of indoor and outdoor Small Cell, DAS and Wi-Fi networks. Ranplan will also be launching standard and simplified Chinese language versions to meet growing demand for localized support.
The CommunicaAsia event follows successful launch events in Taiwan and Indonesia that focused on the challenges of delivering seamless indoor and outdoor radio coverage and capacity. “AsiaPAC countries are leading the deployment of smart city initiatives as the demand for these solutions continues to rise,” says Alastair Williamson, CEO at Ranplan. “But if networks are not planned in coordination they will not achieve seamless indoor / outdoor connectivity and will suffer from poor capacity, coverage and interference.”
The default outside-in approach to indoor planning relies on macro coverage to penetrate into buildings such as office blocks, shopping centers, campuses or stadia. But the move to higher frequency bands with 4G/LTE and 5G has made this approach outdated. As a result, mobile operators are supplementing the outdoor macro model with in-building systems using Small Cells, DAS and Wi-Fi to improve indoor coverage and quality of service.
“Independent models of indoor and outdoor, RAN and backhaul, RF performance and KPI indicators cannot take account of their overall interaction and will therefore be implicitly inaccurate,” says Williamson. “With AsiaPAC countries accelerating their adoption of smart city technology such as smart lighting, building and transportation, a holistic approach to network performance modelling is essential to understand how different types of wireless networks infrastructure will work together.”
The iBuildNet all-in-one solution reduces the time and cost of deployment and ensures support for future technologies and standards. iBuildNet can be used for all indoor and outdoor scenarios from in-building to complex indoor and outdoor facilities, including underground environments such as transport tunnels and shopping malls.
In response to growing demand for iBuildNet in AsiaPAC countries, Ranplan has signed a number of reseller agreements including Teltai and HLS Telecom. These partners put Ranplan in a strong position to take iBuildNet to market and provide local support expertise to customers in these regions.