Wireless networking solutions for education

Background

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s prestigious New Academic Educational Building (NAEB) in Dublin stands five storeys tall and occupies four basement levels. Costing €80m and with a total area of approximately 12,000m2, the building is constructed primarily of concrete frame with structural steel elements and accommodates surgical training, clinical simulation facilities, a 540-seat lecture theatre, a range of training rooms, a 600-student library, a sports hall and a gym. They first approached us to help them provide indoor mobile coverage solutions to their building to ensure that students and staff would have reliable coverage at all times. We revelled in taking on the challenge and soon put in place a wireless networking solution specifically for the education sector.

Challenges and considerations

What became apparent during the construction, however, was that the building largely failed to support reliable in-building mobile coverage solutions because:

• nearly 50% of the building is effectively underground
• the above-ground areas are shielded from solar heat gain by an additional external anodized mesh

The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) chose Vilicom as their partner to design and install a Distributed Antenna System (DAS) to achieve the goal of introducing optimum coverage throughout the new building, from the fourth basement level all the way to the top fifth floor. Our consultants put together a plan to build a reliable school mobile network design.

Our goal was to introduce optimum coverage, from the fourth basement level all the way to the top fifth floor.

Solutions and delivery

As part of our commitment to deliver genuinely end-to-end projects, Vilicom took responsibility for:

• the design and installation of the system
• the procurement of materials
• the commissioning of the repeater-fed passive multi-operator system…
• which now delivers 3G and 4G – and ultimately 5G – coverage to all nine floors

The installation was challenging as we were working on a live construction site alongside other contractors, all with their own competing priorities. However, through focused project management and close co-operation with the main contractor, the project was delivered on time and within budget. Our experienced team were proud of the level of wireless school network coverage they were able to provide for both the staff and students.

Contact

For further information about our wireless networks for the education sector or to discuss further technical specs of wireless networks at schools, please contact Gearoid Collins at gearoid.collins@vilicom.com

About Vilicom

Vilicom is an expert provider of wireless services with over seventeen years of experience in the analysis, design, test and implementation of wireless networks. Vilicom’s strengths lie in technology strategy consulting, the design of wireless networks, transmission network design, implementation of specialised coverage solutions and network benchmarking and testing. Vilicom has delivered its trademark end-to-end services in over 20 countries for network operators, network equipment vendors, industry regulators and investors. It delivers value for its customers by adopting a flexible, customer-focused approach, retaining cutting-edge expertise and maintaining its independence.