The inside track: providing in-building coverage during London 2012 Agenda

• The challenge: why stadia deployments are like no other • The solution: what we did to provide in-building coverage during the London 2012 Games • The benefit: what the outcome was • Next steps… Some statistics

• 9.6 million - tickets for sale • 700,000 (approx) - total capacity for all venues • 80,000 - capacity of the Olympic Stadium • 2,500 - tonnes of steel tubing recycled from old gas pipelines used for Stadium's roof • 12,000 sqm - size of the roof of the Aquatics Centre (one and a half times bigger than the football pitch at Wembley) The challenge

• Stadia deployments are unlike standard in-building projects: • Very high density of users in one place • Exceptionally high traffic per user (sharing action with friends via social media, uploading of pics and video etc) • Static users so consistent coverage is required over entire area • Absence of clutter makes cell isolation difficult and requires special antennas The main London Olympic Stadium What we were asked to do

• Provide in-building coverage for the on and off-park venues during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. • Including: – Main Olympic Stadium – Aquatics Center – Catering Village – Earls Court – International Broadcast Center – Media and Press Center – Millennium Stadium The London Velodrome – Ricoh Arena – St James Park On-park venues supported

• BTS Hotel – Master Units • Olympic Stadium • Aquatics Centre • Water Polo arena • Handball Arena (Copper Box) • Velodrome • Riverbank Hockey • IBC / MPC Complex • The Olympic Village Things to consider

• Such high capacity requires very dense sectors…

90,000 visitors can generate a peak traffic similar to a city with > 500,000 population

• 40+ sectors for a stadium is common • Target is to optimize throughput by maximizing the ‘signal to interference’ • Fast data rates will reduce the connection time for each user and allow for more overall capacity Some guidelines

• Rule of thumb is 2000 spectators per cell! This can result in 40+ sectors per stadium • Narrow beam width antennas (i.e. horizontal BTS antennas) are ideal • Target is to avoid interference by precisely defined, small cells with high isolation Bowl coverage

• Footprint of antenna depends on distance to spectators • Large distances reduce the “sharpness” of the sector and should be avoided • Typically positions near the loudspeakers can qualify as antenna positions The Olympics is like riding a Lion The solution

• One of the largest DAS (Distributed Antenna System) installations ever: – 46 optical remote units in the main stadium alone – Over 300 remotes in total across the venues – All connected to Axell Element Manager (AEM) to provide real- time reporting and support for entire network – On-site support both prior to and during the Games

Screenshot of Axell AEM for London 2012 Olympic Park BTS hotel was used

• A BTS hotel housed all base stations of multiple operators with multiple standards onsite - location was optimized for this purpose • BTS hotel considerably reduces OPEX/CAPEX with savings on space, power and cooling • Easy access by multiple parties was provided to allow swap and replacement within minutes, avoiding access to security restricted areas An overview of the architecture

Master Unit • Modular POI – to combine sectors and adjust levels • Expandable OMU – to convert RF to optical fiber and to supervise remote units BTS

MBF Remote Units 1 2 3 n 4 MBF-D-9-22 MBF-D-9-22 MBF-D-9-22 MBF-D-9-22

1510nm 1530nm 1550nm 1570nm 1310 nm C C C

Fibre optic Master Unit Base Transciever Station & Optic Distribution Frame Optical Fibre The benefits it can bring

• Optical remotes have a much smaller form factor than individual base stations • A single optical remote provides a multi-operator, multi-band solution • Optical remotes can be installed near antennas (virtually no cable loss) • Capacity can be adapted by feeding one or multiple remotes from one sector The results…

Very high capacity and quality achieved by: • Sharp cell definition • Powerful active Fiber DAS systems providing comprehensive multiband coverage

Examples from London Olympics 2012 verification test with Axell MBF system The first ‘truly digital Games’

• Richard Caul, responsible for Network and Service Operations at EE (lead operator), said:

“The London Olympics was an unprecedented event, and warranted an in-building wireless deployment of equal measure. Visitors to the games received a seamless mobile experience, which contributed to the success of the Olympics. The UK mobile operators demonstrated their capability to support one of the most challenging events ever likely to be staged anywhere in the world.” Thank you

Hebert Sedas, Director of Sales – Latin America [email protected]