Wireless Systems Design
Microwave and Radio link planning
Ward had a commercial FCC broadcasting license at the age of 18, in Los Angeles. There are very specialized individuals and firms that also do this work, and sometimes we partner with them for a specific application, but Ward has an array of planning tools to calculate link loses and effects of Fresnel zone attenuation.
One time at a previous company, we had a project in Las Vegas, where we were assisting the Fire Department with improving heart attack survival rates. There are quite a few heart attacks on the streets of Las Vegas, where people get overwhelmed with the heat and the distances. A response to a heart attack is crucial in the seconds after a victim is discovered. We helped develop an ECG 12-lead radio link, with helmet mounted video camera so that a first responder can place the ECG leads on the victims chest within a few seconds and start beaming a live video link to the hospital, where a Cardiologist will tell the EMS team exactly the right triage treatment, even before the victim is moved. In this case, we teamed with an old high school buddy of Wards, who is a PhD radio systems engineer. His day job is bouncing radar signals off Jupiter for an unnamed government agency. In the end, we implemented a semi-custom rig in an EMS fanny-pack which utilized a COFDM transmitter that was immune to multi-path distortion and attenuation. The video signal sent to the hospital had the video cam image of the patients face and eyes, with the live ECG graph overlaid on the video image.
This project was done in 2000, before high speed cellular service was available. Today it could be done with linked Cellular services from multiple service providers using a cellular router from a company like Pepwave. These devices take multiple SIM cards (up to 8 services) from different carriers and aggregate the bandwidth into a fat data stream. But even knowing this piece of technology trivia is a differentiator, as few people are aware of these product developments.
PTT Radio Design and Commissioning – Push to Talk (PTT) Radios or Walkie-Talkies, are still an important and valuable tool for building operators, especially for Engineering and Security teams. The radios are extremely sensitive and can work in deep sub-basements where other devices cannot and they do not depend on any network or power infrastructure to work. We are familiar with and can adapt to technologies such as Digital TDMA, Digital FDMA, DECT, TETRA (mostly Europe), APCO 25 and analogue systems, in VHF, UHF and 800MHz bands.
Wi-Fi System Planning and Design – quite different from our competitors. The 3D simulations are described below. Ward does strategic consulting for Wi-Fi, where the process of upgrading a facilities infrastructure can have major operational implications.
A good example of a completed project of this type was for Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. In this case the University had implemented Wi-Fi over many years in an ad-hoc fashion, adding access points as and when they had the money and some time to install them. What we did for them was to analyze their entire campus system and find out where the holes were. But we also helped them to write a public RFP, where all the major vendors, in this case HPE Aruba, Cisco and Ruckus, would have an opportunity to bid on the wholesale replacement of the Wi-Fi system for the entire campus. Our work finished at the review of the RFP responses and recommendations for a vendor. We did an ibWave 3D simulation of their new hockey arena which was in the early stages of design. Their existing Ekahau Wi-Fi planner software could not handle the tiered seating of the arena, which our tool can do. SMU were very pleased with the overall work we did and they sent us a note saying such. St Mary’s wrote in an email to us, in part “We are extremely pleased with our relationship and the service provided…”
Real Time Location Systems – RTLS – In the early 2000’s, RTLS was Wi-Fi based, but the triangulation to determine ones position was not very accurate or repeatable. A few specialist companies began work on more accurate RTLS systems that could reliably and positively identify the individual room that the person or asset was based. The accuracy and reliability have increased to the point where location accuracy is within a few metres.
The only building type where this is used extensively is hospitals, but other building types are starting to adopt it. Anyplace where there is valuable portable equipment that must be tracked is a candidate for RTLS. Nurses initially balked at carrying the RTLS tags, because they didn’t want their employer ‘tracking’ their every move. However, this changed when Personal Duress buttons were added to the tags, and the Nurses could see the personal benefit to them.
3D RF Simulations in Buildings – somewhat different from our competitors. So called Heat Maps, but our approach is very comprehensive in that we create a 3D model of the building and we can reconcile many different material types inside of a structure. We use iBWave Wi-Fi which is a powerful tool and the only current tool that can handle inclined planes. We primarily use this for Wi-Fi coverage simulation, but the IbWave files can also be used for cellular wireless design in buildings, although we do not have the cellular design suite, which costs $40,000.
Cellular Enhancement inside buildings – The primary tool used worldwide for Cellular/RF design inside buildings is iBwave of Montreal. We have the Wi-Fi only version of this tool which costs us about CAD $6,000 and CAD $1,000 per year in upgrades and maintenance. The Full Enterprise Design suite including the RF and Cellular components costs over CAD $30,000 (per seat), and has a very steep learning curve. The training per person is close to CAD $20,000. We don’t have a business case for these kinds of costs.
The full Enterprise Design suite is primarily used by the specialist contractor firms that are installing cellular enhancement systems in buildings. Instead, we perform on-site basic site surveys using standard cell phones and commercial survey software, for a single cell provider (usually the strongest) at the site. Ward’s Android phone also has the ability to perform multi-carrier cellular surveys, when using low cost RF survey tools. Apple IOS devices for some inexplicable reason do not support this. Ward also owns an RF Spectrum Analyzer that can sniff out any RF signals from 700MHz to 6GHz, which covers virtually all of the bands we typically use.
Cellular Enhancement inside the building is a required component of many Five Star Hotel RFP’s. Usually we issue a performance RFP that describes what the installers need to quote, which always must include an iBWave model of the building. Mobile operators all demand that an iBWave model is submitted to them prior to them agreeing to connect up their equipment to the building.