To begin, Merola and his team determined the configuration of the CEL-FI QUATRA using iBwave. “We were able to save them more than half of what they were going to spend on the active DAS solution,” he says. “But we actually increased to all four carriers, rather than just two that were planned with the active DAS, and we installed everything in conduit, so in a straight comparison, it was a lot less than half.”
Wytec mounted four donor antennas outside on the elevator shaft of a 10-story above-ground parking structure adjacent to Fountain Place. The team then ran the cables in conduit down into the basement, where the mechanical room was located. Twelve NUs (Network Units that are the headend units of the QUATRA system) were placed in two racks in the underground mechanical room. Utilizing ethernet cable and cable extenders, 44 CUs (Coverage Units that are the remote units that broadcast the signal) were distributed throughout the garage’s three floors.
“Normally, the NUs are mounted on a wall or in a closet,” explains Merola. “By putting them in the mechanical room, we could mount an equipment rack, cable management, and ladder tray, so the installation was, to me, second to none.”
The Wytec team also put all of the CUs in NEMA-certified enclosures to protect them from being damaged by water from pressure washers that are used when the garage was cleaned. “We wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any damage to the CUs,” says Merola. “We had to retrofit the boxes a bit to accommodate the adapters to mount the equipment, but it wasn’t difficult.” The entire project took 61 days to complete, from signing the agreement to complete installation.
Using the intuitive CEL-FI WAVE remote monitoring and management platform, Wytec was able to commission and monitor the system within eight hours, versus the several days usually required to accomplish the same thing with a traditional DAS solution.
