Besançon project rapidly extends service to blocked area via remote antenna
Situation
A leading French mobile network operator needed to improve 2G and 3G coverage at one of its cellular sites in Besançon, France, where the signal from an antenna sector located on the roof of a building was partly blocked by a building located across the street. Such “zone of poor coverage” areas are common in many developed environments, where nearby buildings create radio masks that can limit network coverage. Fortunately, the coverage issue could be resolved by deploying a remote antenna on the roof of the building causing the blockage and connecting it back to the original antenna site.
Action
The operator had three options.
- A traditional approach of running coaxial or fiber-optic feeder cables between the buildings would have been costly and the impacts on the local community and environment would have been significant.
- Installing cables between the buildings would have caused lengthy traffic blockages, as well as noise and site disruption.
- EBlink’s wireless fronthaul solution, which relayed the blocked signal to a remote antenna atop the second building via a wireless link. This was the option selected by the mobile operator.
Result
By using EBlink’s solution, the operator split the signal from an existing sector to a remote antenna and avoided the need to add a fourth sector. The operator realized significant cost savings along with a dramatically reduced installation time with the EBlink solution: installation was completed in one day because there was no need for disruptive civil works to install feeder cables between the buildings. The EBlink solution also avoided the need for an additional base station transceiver.
Summary of the three options
Type of operation | Installing remote sector using classic feeder cables | Installing additional base station on the opposite building | Using EBlink’s wireless fronthaul solution |
Excavation and trenching for feeder cables | Significant site disruption; expensive civil works
| No excavation
| Not required |
Civil works and equipment installation | Significant civil works required to deploy feeder cables along building wall and on rooftop | Roof-leakage prevention required. Construction of a technical room and conduits for feeder cables required.
| Minimal |
Installation time
| 4 weeks | 2 weeks | 1 day |
Site construction cost
| 123k€ | 35k€ | 12k€ |