CommScope’s ION-U simplifies DAS troubleshooting in Europe
Today CommScope announced the ION-U for European markets. By supporting the five frequency bands common to Europe in a single solution, the deployment of indoor and outdoor distributed antenna systems in Europe should be less complicated and costly.
One of the key challenges of deploying DAS is the complexity needed to support multiple frequency bands, multiple-input/multiple-output requirements and to reduce the requirement for potentially expensive dark fiber. With the CommScope solution, a single fiber is able to support all of the required frequencies, rather than the separate fibers as required by other solutions. The ION-U covers the 800, 900, 1800, 2100 and 2600 MHz band frequencies and tri-band MIMO, allowing for an increase in capacity that can be supported while maintaining a small-form factor.
Another issue facing DAS deployments is that of passive intermodulation. Historically, with in-building solutions that incurred passive intermodulation, technicians would have to manually check all antennas to determine where the problem was coming from. Consider that an airport could have between 200 and 300 antennas – imagine the amount of work that would be required. The ION-U is able to troubleshoot across the network and determine which antenna is causing the issue without the need for a technician’s intervention. Time and costs can be reduced by dispatching the technician directly to the area of the known problem.
Another form of intelligence enabled is self-configuration during the initial deployment. CommScope gave the analogy of connecting a new printer to a network and using a setup wizard, another factor that supports the lower cost of ownership associated with this solution.
So why the focus on Europe? It’s about the ability to combine the multiple frequency bands in a single solution. Basically making this product “Europe-ready.” CommScope said its ION-M product has been successful in that market and the new product is the path to upgrade.
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Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA for RCR Wireless News, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and security. Having experience as an operator, software and hardware vendor and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless News.
