Axell Wireless scores seamless mobile coverage for football fans in Brazil this summer

Axell Wireless, the worldwide provider of wireless coverage solutions and the company behind the successful in-venue coverage at the London 2012 Olympics, has supplied DAS (distributed antenna systems) for multiple stadia in Brazil allowing fans to further enjoy and share their experience of the country’s upcoming large sporting events on social media via seamless mobile data coverage.

Working closely with leading partner RFS (Radio Frequency Systems), Axell has helped to deliver cellular mobile phone coverage to sporting venues in Brazil, including the Maracanã stadium and the Mineirão stadium: two of the country’s largest stadia with a combined capacity of over 141,000. The sophisticated in-building coverage solution ensures the thousands of spectators at these high-profile sporting events can share the experience with friends and family via their mobile devices without any service degradation.

Matt Thompson, Vice-President of Sales - Americas, Axell Wireless said: “Deploying one of the most sophisticated DAS networks in the world for the London 2012 Olympic Games prepared us well for these projects in Brazil. The stadium environment is unique in many ways when it comes to designing and installing a wireless coverage network, and the insight we gathered during London 2012 has meant we can supply a world-class communications system that will support the fans during upcoming major sporting events”.

A stadium environment poses significant challenges when designing an in-building network as the traffic has a number of unique characteristics. Large volumes of uplink traffic, as well as huge peaks and troughs, are created as spectators and fans share pictures and videos on social networking sites as the action happens inside the stadium. In addition to this, spectators inside a venue are static, meaning coverage has to be delivered across all seating areas at all times. Further, wireless coverage systems for stadiums are designed with multiple base station sectors to ensure sufficient capacity to support all the spectators. Handling the overlap with the external macro network also requires careful planning and implementation.

The partnership of Axell Wireless and RFS are well placed to deal with these challenges. “We are proud to be able to work with the team at Axell to bring comprehensive wireless coverage to these world class venues,” said Peter Raabe, Global Product Line Director for Transmission Lines and Wireless Indoor Solutions, RFS. “Thanks to our strong local RFS presence in Brazil and our proven capability and expertise to provide RF design, commission and deployment services, combined with first class products, our solutions are very well suited to such a large-scale and complex endeavour.”

The venues now benefit from a state of the art optical DAS simultaneously supporting five different mobile operators and providing 2G, 3G, and 4G coverage.