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first indoor 5G NR test in brazil
Located on the shores of Baia de Guanabara in Rio de Janeiro and enjoying a beautiful view of Pão de Açucar and Cristo Redentor, Bossa Nova Mall is a very peculiar shopping center. The project is the first in the segment connected to an airport in Brazil. It serves the enormous flow of passengers from Santos Dumont, one of the busiest in the country, in addition to the residences and businesses in the center and southern section of the city.
In addition to the shopping mall and the airport, the complex, a retrofit of the old Varig Log warehouse, also sports a hotel, a convention center, and a business center, bringing great convenience and comfort to its customers and partners.
Connectivity in a project like this is a basic necessity, as fundamental as water and electricity. Whether for sales promotions, company-wide campaigns, or even making simple voice calls, surfing the internet, and exchanging messages, subscribers expect to receive excellent wireless service while at the mall.
Saphyr, the company that owns the mall, knew this even before the launch of many of the applications we have on our smartphones today. In 2015, the company sought to guarantee a quality mobile network throughout the venue, right from its inception.
A telecommunications infrastructure project in a place of this magnitude is always tricky. The Bossa Nova case, however, required extra care to avoid interference with the airport. The whole indoor area would be served by an Active DAS. QMC used proprietary and non-proprietary tools to ensure the signal was contained in the building, guaranteeing 100% safety to the airport operation.
The old Varig Log warehouse underwent numerous renovations to be transformed into a shopping center. Particularly challenging was allocating new installations, electrical, air conditioning, and telecommunications in limited spaces, with reduced ceiling heights, without the availability of large technical rooms. The final solution identified to house the DAS equipment was unprecedented: dividing the equipment room across two different floors. The cabling for the antennas was also optimized to reduce its total footprint in the passageways.
The DAS was installed in the whole building and delivered in 2016. A few months later, the three operators in the country already had active signals within the site.
The long-standing partnership between QMC and Bossa Nova hosted a a crucial chapter in the country’s telecommunications history. Anticipating the arrival of 5G NR, the mall’s DAS system was the stage for the preliminary tests of the new technology in an indoor environment. New Radio or “NR” technology is based on a more capable new network architecture compared to previous generations, such as 4G. The tests were conducted in 2021 with authorization from regulatory agencies even before the auction of the 5G spectrum took place in Brazil.
Three areas of the complex with a large concentration of people were selected for the test: the food court, the app based passenger transport meeting point, and the hotel lounge.
Using the 5G NR GHz frequency band, considered ideal for 5G due to the combination of capacity and range/penetration, download speeds of 1,371 Mbps and upload speeds of 84.6 Mbps were obtained during the tests. Those results would make it possible to download an entire movie in just a few seconds.
The successful test paved the way for developing and implementing advanced 5G NR indoor connectivity solutions in several other projects, confirming the viability and effectiveness of the technology and highlighting its potential to drive digital transformation
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