WIRELESS RESORT

FlexWave Prism Brings Wireless to Singapore's Sentosa Island

Wireless service is
something that people
expect, and the only
reaction one gets to it
is if it doesnt work,
~ Ng Ah Seng

The newest resort property in Singapore is the 120-acre Resorts World at Sentosa.
Opened on February 14, 2010, the island property includes six theme hotels, a
Universal Studios theme park, the Marine Life Park, the Maritime Experiential
Museum, and the Equarius Water Park.
With an expected 35,000 visitors per day, one key technology challenge on
Sentosa Island was to provide clear and ubiquitous mobile coverage. Sentosa is
located a mile offshore from Singapore, and cell towers in Singapore could deliver
signals to the outdoor areas of the island, but there was inadequate indoor wireless
coverage and, more importantly, insufficient capacity to serve the crowds of visitors
and employees.
NCS, a leading IT and communications engineering service provider in the AsiaPacific region, was engaged by Singapore mobile operators M1, SingTel Mobile,
StarHub Mobile and GRID Communications to oversee the project on enabling
seamless wireless connectivity. NCS has a proven track record of providing total
turnkey solutions for mobile operators/building owners to facilitate in-building and
tunnel coverage for GSM, 2G and 3G wireless services.
We needed to provide strong signals and high network capacity inside the resorts
buildings for both 2G and 3G wireless frequencies, said Ng Ah Seng, project

manager for NCS. We also needed to provide adequate

capacity for outdoor crowds so that anyone could make a
call, send a text, or use 3G Internet or e-mail services.

host units located in the basement levels of the resorts

parking structures, which is also where the base stations
werelocated.

To meet this challenge, NCS selected a distributed antenna

system (DAS). The project involved having the local mobile
operators install base stations on the island, and then using
a distributed antenna system (DAS) to distribute the signals
from those base stations to the properties throughout
theresort.

With this system in place, guests and employees were able

to use their mobile voice, text, and data services normally on
opening day, and have had continuous service ever
since then.

There are several types of DAS products for applications

such as this, but only one met all of the projects goals, says
Seng. The DAS had to be relatively unobtrusive and not
interfere with the interior or exterior dcor of the properties,
and it had to support four different service providers within a
single set of antennas.
NCS selected the FlexWave Prism from TE. The Prism system
can handle up to four different wireless frequencies in a single
remote antenna, so this approach minimized the number of
antennas that were needed. In addition, the antennas covered
relatively large areas (multiple floors of a hotel, for example),
so this also reduced the number of antennas needed. (Other
systems would have used small, ceiling-mounted antennas
and might have needed individual sets of antennas for each
frequency, so these would have required hundreds of units.)
Another reason for the choice of FlexWave Prism is that
the antennas could be mounted on walls, poles, or sides of
buildings to meet the specific coverage and capacity needs
of each outdoor area in the resort. Inside the hotels, the
Prism systems were mounted inside wiring closets so as to be
invisible to visitors and employees.
The system involved deploying 46 remote antenna units
inside buildings, and placing additional roof-mounted
antennas to deliver outdoor coverage and capacity. The
antenna units were connected via fiber optic cabling to

Wireless service is something that people expect, and the

only reaction one gets to it is if it doesnt work, says Seng.
At Resort World at Sentosa, the DAS system
created a strong, high-quality, high-capacity
wireless service infrastructure throughout the
massive integrated resort so the service worked
seamlessly as expected.

CHALLENGES
Insufficient wireless capacity and
in-building coverage on resort island
Resort visitors using multiple
mobile operatorsdevices
Deployment of a solution had
to be fast andunobtrusive

Wall-mounted
Prism Remote

SOLUTIONS
FlexWave Prism covered 120
acres and inside hotels and
other buildings
Multi-operator system
supports all four major mobile
operators in Singapore
Small remote antennas
blend in with resortdcor
Prism Host Units
rack-mounted in cabinets.

CASE STUDY

Contact us:
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Minneapolis, Minnesota
USA 55440-1101
Tel: 1-800-366-3891
Fax: 1-952-917-3237
www.te.com/wirelessSolutions

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109326AE6/13Original 2012, 2013