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Overview
The shared radio infrastructure at Heathrow Terminal 5 is the largest example of a multi-user PMR & Cellular distributed antenna system in the world. The system comprises of a mixture of passive and active infrastructure providing PMR & Cellular coverage to the main terminal buildings (concourses A & B), its connecting tunnels (Transit shuttle, baggage and road tunnels) along with land-side and air-side external areas. Included in this is the extension of the Heathrow Express & Piccadilly Line to Terminal 5 from the Heathrow Central Terminal Area.
The system uses over 20 primary & secondary communications rooms, two radio towers, more than 40km of low loss and leaky feeder cable and over 250 antennas.
STS-Wireless has been instrumental at every stage of the project from concept design through to integration, testing and commissioning of both the PMR & Cellular systems as follows:
Design Services
- Specification, validation & management of the radio planning tool software to produce plots of expected coverage levels within the terminal utilising architects drawings within the AutoCAD environment.
- Specification of all passive and active equipment to be used across the T5 campus.
- Provision of design services to the Rails & Tunnels team in support of the Heathrow Express Extension project.
- Specification of PMR & Cellular radio room requirements, layout drawings, rack face elevations, space and services requirements.
- Production and maintenance of design documentation such as schematics and infrastructure drawings, installation and test & commissioning construction specification documents & guideline documents.
- Design co-ordination with architects and other building services & support to production.
- Liaison with 3rd Party users such as Police, Fire, BA to facilitate integration of their services onto the system.
Production Services – Technical Project Management
- Management of installation & commissioning teams for PMR & Cellular
- Management of PMR & Cellular programme, costs and health & safety
- Manage change & risk within the programme
- Monitor quality of installation and commissioning activity by production & maintenance of documentation and databases
Installation & Commissioning Services
- Installation of all PMR & Cellular active equipment including base-stations, fibre optic head ends, optical remote units & combining equipment into primary & secondary radio rooms within Terminal 5 & Central Terminal areas
- Integration & commissioning of PMR & Cellular active equipment throughout Terminal 5
- Testing of passive infrastructure (leaky feeder, low loss cable, antennas and other devices)
- Coverage testing of PMR infrastructure across VHF, TETRA & UHF radio bands
- Coverage testing of Cellular infrastructure across GSM900, GSM1800 & UMTS bands
- Provide assistance to 3rd Party PMR & Cellular operators during integration of their base-station equipment
- Conduct live network analysis testing for the Cellular operators
- Troubleshooting operator configurations to negate interference issues
WLAN Services
In addition to the radio systems, the WLAN network for Terminal 5 totals over 600 access points. STS-Wireless was involved in the following:
- Radio planning tool characterisation for 802.11a/b/g bands – glass & wall penetration testing
- Cable insertion and return loss testing of antenna feed cables for 802.11a/b/g bands.
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