Cobham Wireless announced that it has deployed a city-wide digital Distributed Antenna System (DAS) network to deliver indoor and outdoor smart city coverage for Telefonica & Vodafone in Berlin.
Cobham Wireless said its patented idDAS (intelligent digital DAS) technology and the C-RAN (Cloud/Centralised Radio Access Network) deployment model can share capacity across venues in a city, in a cost-efficient manner.
Cobham Wireless’ idDAS now delivers scalable, high-capacity coverage to the Berlin Fan Mile, the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, and the Steigenberger Hotel. There are plans to further extend the system throughout 2018 and beyond, delivering coverage to a growing number of businesses and venues.
The project launched in 2015, when Cobham Wireless partnered with Vodafone and Telefónica to deploy its idDAS, providing 3G and 4G cellular coverage to one million partygoers at the world’s largest New Year’s Eve event, on Berlin’s Fan Mile.
Utilising the base station hotel 25km away from the Fan Mile site, the Cobham Wireless team were able to connect additional sites to that remote BTS hotel (cloud) at a fraction of the cost and time, said Cobham.
The system reduces CapEx and OpEx for any operator using the architecture – and can incorporate new operators as it is developed – and now provides high-capacity, and energy- and cost-efficient coverage to a number of buildings across a wide geographical area.
The C-RAN approach means base station equipment can be located at a remote site outside the city, reducing onsite rental and maintenance requirements. It removes the complexity, cost and disruptive impact of deploying multiple operating and control sites for each area that needs to be connected.
Rami Hasarchi, VP Coverage, Cobham Wireless
The idDAS C-RAN architecture enables venue owners to adopt a neutral-host model – which has already gained popularity in Germany – supporting multiple operators, technologies and applications, and enabling venues to provide comprehensive, high-capacity coverage, even in the most challenging of environments.
