In-building Coverage Planner Launched

Cellular Design Services (CDS) has launched IBiSA, a unique software tool for ensuring that in-building systems meet coverage requirements while minimising the cost of deployment. IBiSA is applicable to a wide range of wireless technologies, including 2G, 3G, TETRA and Wireless LAN. It provides rapid and very accurate prediction of the coverage characteristics of a proposed in-building system, enabling the designer to minimise the system cost involved in reaching the required levels of coverage and capacity.

IBiSA builds on two elements developed uniquely at CDS. Firstly, CDS' experience of over 250 in-building projects, including the world's busiest airport and the UK's tallest building. Secondly, a patented technology developed by CDS and known as Measurement-based Prediction, MbP, which takes simple site surveys and predicts radio wave propagation characteristics throughout a building, even for antenna locations which were not initially tested.

Professor Simon Saunders, CDS' Chief Technical Officer, said, "The complexity of the in-building environment has meant that no reliable planning tools for the in-building environment have previously been produced. The cost of in-building systems has been greater than necessary, as system design has relied entirely on the experience and intuition of the design engineer. This has limited the growth of in-building systems, and has meant that in-building users have had to put up with incidental coverage provided almost entirely by outdoor cells. We have learnt the lessons of the in-building environment over the last five years, and can now provide access to this experience via the MbP technology used within IBiSA. Typically, we find that coverage can be provided with 25% less antennas than the conventional approach."

Posted to the site on 9th September 2003