Power Plant 101 for DAS

Not all of us in DAS have to deal with power plants, but having some basic knowledge does not hurt. That's the purpose of this post - a basic, high level summary of how a power plant for DAS or BTS head-end works.

Google adds Indoor Maps

Over 10,000 floor plans of selected locations are available in Google Maps across 9 different countries such as Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, the U.S., Sweden, and Switzerland. Check out indoor maps availability on your desktop. "Simply zoom in on a building on Google Maps and you’ll automatically see a detailed floor plan with helpful labels for gates at the airport, stores within the mall, departments within a retail shop, as well as ATMs, restrooms and more." (Google Post)

How accurate are these? Let's just say I could not find Chili's on this floor plan :)

You can add your floor plans to Google Maps here. As DAS engineers and project managers we get to see a lot of floor plans daily. However, not sure what kind of privacy clause will we fall under. So I don't see myself uploading any floor plans any time soon. Despite the limited number of floor plans and upload issues I don't need to explain why this is a good news for DAS designers and engineers.

Memoto Lifelogging Camera

Memoto camera is a tiny, automatic wearable camera that gives you a searchable and share-able photographic memory. You will find the features very interesting and exciting. Still in funding stage, you can check out the Kickstarter page.

So how can it add any value in DAS?

Mobile App Wishlist: Signal on floor plan

Android Tablet

I want an app that allows me to capture signal strength and signal quality data right on the floor plan during my site survey. Yes, there are Drive Test Wireless Network Optimization Tool out there (E6474A from JDSU for example) that can do what I am wishing for and lot more (and we definitely have need for them); but I am not looking for a Mercedes to go for shopping when a Toyota Corolla will do. With Android app and tablet (not iPAD), I think this is relatively "easily" possible. Let me qualify "easily". I am not an Android programmer, but searching through the Android Developer's Library I see quite a few ready-made, albiet basic commands (Public Constructors and Methods in Android jargon) that can be integrated in Android apps. These commands cover CDMA, GSM, UMTS, etc. It's not a comprehensive list, and neither are all the parametrs in DAS are available in this library. But there are enough to create a floor plan with signal readings (see a list of commands after the break).

A letter to the Team

Here is an email went out to a team within our company. Posting it for future reference:

Gentlemen,
On 11/6/12, you accepted this mission of submitting 39 COPs by 11/12/12, 7 more ISD COPs by 11/9/12, and 6-7 more COPs by 11/12/12. Please ration your time well, and plan ahead, and work as a team to get this completed. If you have to work through the weekend, prepare yourself to do that.

What does working as a team mean?

1. If your team does not reach the goal, you did NOT reach it. It does not matter what you did.
2. Does that mean you will be penalized for working harder and pulling more weight? No. Not if you hold your team accountable. All work is divided. If you are done with your part, help your team-mate - but at the same time hold him accountable (i.e., "You were supposed to do this....")
3. Be a leader and provide leadership. Title does not make a leader. What this means is plan by looking at the goal; if you have to change plans, talk to the team, replan, regroup. If your team does not listen to you, that means either the plan was bad, or you were not convincing enough. 
4. Respect each other. This is constant in any effort - if I have to explain this, I need to talk to your mother.

Inventory List generated by DAS system

Did you know your DAS can probably generate an inventory list of what is on the system - serial numbers, soft labels, etc.?
This is very valuable. Most of them are downloadable as CSV (comma-separated values) file - this is essentially an Excel file. By changing some formats it is easy to make it visually appealing, and a valuable tool. Customer often asks for serial numbers of RF devices to be included in the close-out package. Instead of going to every remote devices and taking down the serial numbers, this is an easy and quick way to collect those information.

Following are some samples from SOLiD and MobileAccess DAS. Format of the CSV files were updated for better visualization.

DAS Head-end Board with Visual System Overview (VSO)

I recently went to a Neutral Host DAS head-end which we installed a few months ago. It took me a at least 10 minutes to figure out how all the head-end devices were connected. That was too long, considering the fact I engineered the head-end and did principal share of the commissioning and integration. If it took me 10 minutes, it will take others a lot longer.

In order to avoid similar situation in future, we updated the labeling (basically, added a lot more labels), and added a Visual System Overview on the wall. Lets call it VSO (since we are technical people, how can we not come up with another geeky term?!!)