Solving Cellular Coverage Issues The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide Performance Leaders
Solving Cellular Coverage Issues The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide Performance Leadership Ease of Install Leaders in Value Fastest Project Timeline Carrier Grade cel-fi.com Why Does Poor Cellular Coverage Exist Today? Building Materials Block Reception Obstruction from Tower Cellular signals can be inhibited or blocked by trees, hills, building materials, and bad weather — regardless of the carrier you use. Brick Metal Mountains Weather Concrete Walls Buildings Trees LEED Certified Glass Buyer’s Guide: Smart Cellular Coverage Solutions cel-fi.com How common is poor in-building cellular coverage? Spotty indoor cellular coverage and dead zones are nothing new. In fact, many of us have experienced these first hand as employees or customers. Frequency of Workers Experiencing Bad Cellular Coverage Healthcare 83% 77% 80% 66% 82% Hospitality Retail Office Warehouse/Distribution Source Zinwave 2017 Poor Cellular Coverage is Not an Option The world has moved to mobile... personal, professional, and public safety initiatives all employ cellular, all the time. But there are answers to this problem. Buyer’s Guide: Smart Cellular Coverage Solutions cel-fi.com Understanding the Problem: Check Your Signal Strength Cell Phone Bars The bars on your handset or tablet can be confusing as they do not always show raw signal strength, as one might expect. Almost all mobile manufacturers have their own algorithm to calculate things like signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio (SiNR), and channel loading among other things. The bars on the phone often paint an inaccurate picture, or don’t tell the whole story. Check Your Raw Signal Strength Every mobile device has different algorithms for selecting bars and the method of putting your phone into Field Test Mode. Placing your phone into Field Test Mode will allow you to view raw signal strength. Raw signal is the only way to get true signal strength readings from most smartphones. Additionally, there are a variety of free applications that provide some deeper insight into the signal quality. Deciphering What Raw Signal Strength Means to You Keep in mind, a larger number is a stronger signal. For example, -75 is stronger than -100.. For example, if your signal strength jumps from -111 to -100 with Cel-Fi your signal is 10 times stronger than it was without Cel-Fi. The cellular scale is not 0 to 100, but the range of usable cellular LTE signal is -120dBm (just barely usable) to -60dBm (about the best you will find). WEAK: -105 dB Signal Receive Power (RSRP) HEALTHIER: +5.4 dB SiNR Signal Quality STRONG:: -64 dB Received Signal Strength POOR:: -1.5 dB SiNR Signal Quality Our Goal is the Best Donor Signal Some handsets may take signal quality into account when calculating the number of signal “bars” to display. This makes sense because signal quality drives data rates and the user experience more than raw received signal strength. Buyer’s Guide: Smart Cellular Coverage Solutions cel-fi.com Understanding the Solutions: Hype vs Reality Wi-Fi Calling The Hype: Wi-Fi Calling can be used anywhere, anytime. The Reality: No, it can’t. Wi-Fi Calling is only available in some contexts. An underlying problem is that many enterprises experience poor Quality of Service (QoS). Wi-Fi spectrum is unlicensed, best effort, and hotly contended for by all of the new IoT things connecting to Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6 helps, but it’s still Wi-Fi. In a business context, Wi-Fi is sufficient as a data layer only. Wi-Fi Calling only works with certain cellular devices, it’s quirky in practice, and those devices need to be attached to the WLAN. There can also be issues relating to the handover of cellular calls when a caller is on the move. Managed Wi-Fi services help, but Wi-Fi calling may not be good enough for some enterprise applications or specific business demands. After one or two important call drops or misses, many enterprises move away from Wi-Fi-first calling strategy. Small Cell The Hype: Call your carrier, order a small cell or two. Simply drop them into your building and connect them to the Internet. Problem solved! The Reality: It’s not quite that simple. Outdoor small cells are going to be ubiquitous as a core part of the 5G networks. Indoors, small cells are a mixed bag. Some operators are incorporating small cells into their strategies, others are less confident. They continue to improve each year with advanced technologies, such as interference cancellation and SON (self-organizing network) capabilities. Unlike Wi-Fi, which can be quite inexpensive, small cells (i.e. femtocells and picocells) are typically $3K to $5K each for the hardware, with 5G being more. Not all small cells are created equal in terms of ease of setup and performance. There are a few key issues related to small cells. First, similar to Wi-Fi, the coverage footprint is highly dependent on the interior layout of the indoor space, specific alignments, and other factors that may inhibit the spread of the signal. Second is backhaul. In addition to a general bandwidth requirement (30-40mbps+), some small cells actually require specific and detailed IP settings that may require professional-grade IT skills to install, setup, and maintain. Third is performance. Although small cells have improved, users can still experience dead or poor-performance spots within a facility as a result of interference. And they are still point solutions. It can be impossible to meet the coverage distribution needs of an entire space with one or two small cells, due to common interior signal blockers. Buyer’s Guide: Smart Cellular Coverage Solutions cel-fi.com Active DAS (aDAS) The Hype: aDAS is expensive, but high performance. In all but the largest installations (1MM square feet and above), aDAS is not a viable solution The Reality: There’s some truth to that, with exceptions. In some areas the hype and the reality are fairly well-aligned. aDAS is expensive and it is high performance. Some aDAS providers are working on smaller footprint solutions for the middleprise (mid-sized enterprise) space. While capex costs are coming down, aDAS still requires an infrastructure ecosystem, which adds to the cost and time to deploy. Most active DAS products utilize fiber, which adds substantial cost, up to 10x the cost of category or coax cable. One of the biggest challenges with any DAS installation is establishing the signal source(s). Typically multiple network operators need to be included, which means multiple retransmission agreements/contracts, to support a maximum number of users, so it is not uncommon for an aDAS project to require 12 to 18 months before it even gets off the ground. Passive DAS (pDAS) The Hype: Passive DAS is the most cost-effective way to improve in-building cellular coverage. The Reality: It has its limits and can cost you more than you think. Passive DAS differs from active DAS in that it pulls its donor signal (the signal source) off-air or “over-the-air” (OTA) from the macro network. It requires less equipment, setup, and maintenance than aDAS. What’s often not mentioned is that pDAS doesn’t add any capacity to the macro network – a problem in environments with a large number of active users, and one reason network operators do not normally endorse pDAS. Because of technology limitations, performance can vary from one operator to the next in the same system. This is due the technology’s inability to manage different RF signal strengths effectively. pDAS is an analog system in which cellular signals are distributed over coax cable and transmitted through regular antennas. Newer distribution methodologies that use category cable are substantially easier to work with and deploy, reducing costs and time-to-market. Active DAS Hybrid (hDAS) or Smart Signal Booster The Hype: It hasn’t hit mainstream yet. The Reality: It’s a Carrier Grade Solution being used for the last de- cade with solutions ranging from Mobile to SMB to Middleprise. Smart Signal Boosters are used in both plug & play environments and more IT centric installs using passive antenna elements. These are the highest-grade solutions available to this market, and function at up to 1000x dB more gain than the nearest competitor. All-digital active DAS hybrid systems are increasingly being deployed to address the in-building cellular coverage demands of the middleprise market. These systems can be used in off-air mode or tethered to a small cell to achieve uniform coverage and capacity distribution, both at a far lower price than traditional DAS. New , multi-carrier all-digital active DAS hybrid solutions hit the market in 2020, and have added an entirely new dimension to affordable in –building cellular coverage for Enterprise. Buyer’s Guide: Smart Cellular Coverage Solutions cel-fi.com Best in Performance Cel-Fi solutions are carrier-grade, and can perform at a level that is 1,000 times stronger. Cel-Fi WAVE Portal • Data modeling and reporting • Cel-Fi device and asset management • Mobile applications • Globally trusted carrier-grade security • Users can access the Cel-Fi WAVE portal through the dashboard interface. Network Safe Self-organizing edge intelligence ensures that Cel-Fi does not interfere with other indoor wireless products such as Wi‑Fi routers, Small Cells, and Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS). High speed Automatic Gain Control ensures that Cel‑Fi is unconditionally network safe, and enables more simultaneous calls and higher data speeds. IntelliBoost™ Chipset uploads/Management/ cell-coverage-buyers-guide.pdf
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- Publié le Jui 07, 2021
- Catégorie Management
- Langue French
- Taille du fichier 5.7878MB