Verizon Wireless In-Building Distributed Antenna System Featuring ADX Series Fiber DAS By Advanced RF Technologies

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1 Verizon Wireless In-Building Distributed Antenna System Featuring ADX Series Fiber DAS By Advanced RF Technologies Venue: Hewlett Packard, Windward Campus 5555 Windward Parkway Alpharetta, GA A White Paper by Verizon Wireless and Advanced RF Technologies 1 P age

2 Overview Verizon Wireless prides itself on providing our customers the best network performance in the U.S. This robust performance extends not only on the macro side but also to in-building environments, especially for our corporate customers for whom we have allocated capital expenditure budget to provide seamless coverage. Hewlett Packard, the leading global manufacturer of PCs and printers, has a major corporate office location in Alpharetta, GA, just north of Atlanta. The customer had insufficient RF signal penetration from the macro network, which caused poor performance for their wireless devices supporting voice and 3G/4G data services. The location required an in-building distributed antenna solution (DAS) for the entire facility, comprised by 3 buildings spanning over 525,000ft 2, primarily consisting of office space, showroom, and data center. With the size of the coverage scope and the signal strength needed to adequately service the campus, the solution would require a fiber-optic DAS solution. Verizon Wireless always carefully analyzes which fiber DAS vendor to choose for each environment, based on the features and benefits that a particular platform will afford the environment in need of coverage. For HP Windward, we selected ADRF as the OEM vendor to provide their ADX active fiber DAS for a number of compelling reasons, including the following: Ultra band modularity for easy future growth Superior system control and diagnostic capabilities through the robust Web-GUI More RF power at the Remote Units Speed and ease of commissioning and troubleshooting Cost savings on both equipment and labor 2 P age

3 Modularity The ADX platform is extremely modular in nature and offers a cost-effective and future-proofed way to expand to new bands very easily and with limited additional equipment. Currently, Verizon Wireless provides services on the Cellular, PCS and 700MHz bands in this region but, in the future, we expect to offer services on the AWS band as well. As such, Verizon Wireless only requested ADRF to design the DAS solution for the three existing bands, so that we only paid for what we needed. At the same time, we had peace of mind that the AWS upgrade would not only be cost effective but also it could be performed without taking the DAS off-line. ADRF designed both the ADX Head End and the Remote Units to be hot-swappable so that, when the time comes, we can add AWS modules quickly, easily, and without disrupting service. Figure I. Upgrade path to AWS 3 P age

4 System-Wide Commissioning From an installation perspective, one of the most time-consuming and complicated aspects of the DAS deployment process is system commissioning. With many of the DAS platforms in the market, the commissioning process can take a substantial amount of time because of the large quantities of active components that must be individually turned on and commissioned. Fortunately, the ADX DAS has a System-Wide Commissioning Routine that allows the installer to power up and commission all Remote Units of a specific band. Once the Head-End equipment has been commissioned, the routine will set both the downlink and uplink paths to allow the Remote Unit to output the maximum power level. With the benefit of this System-Wide Commissioning Routine, the HP Windward system was on-air effortlessly with the press of a button. Within 10 minutes, all of the Remotes Units were operating at properly balanced RF levels. To finalize the commissioning process, we just had to find any Remote Units with alarms (soft or hard failures) via the simple tree structure in the Web-GUI and optimize those modules. The entire commissioning process was completed within an hour. Figure IV. Fast and easy automated commissioning via Web-GUI 4 P age

5 RF Power At Verizon Wireless, we know that the amount of RF power needed per Remote Unit in a fiber DAS always depends on several factors. At HP Windward, the environment was primarily office space, showroom, and data center spread out over several hundred thousand square feet. In this type of environment, Verizon Wireless prefers Remote Units that can offer significant RF power, as this would provide more flexibility to efficiently cover the scope area. The Remote Units can be placed centrally in the building or to one side, allowing the designer to utilize the passive architecture to their advantage. The ADX platform provides both 1W and 2W options in all bands (which is especially important in the higher bands like PCS and AWS), thus providing more than sufficient RF power for any of the Remote Unit locations. All other in-building DAS platforms were found to require at least 30% to 50% more Remote Units than the ADX solution in order to meet the same scope objective at HP Windward. After deploying the solution, we confirmed via walk testing that the system performance previously anticipated to be outstanding through ibwave modeling was indeed exceptional, as the RF output power at each of the server antennas could withstand long coaxial cable runs and still penetrate several walls and high-density equipment. Figure III. Coverage requirements achieved through high output power 5 P age

6 Uplink Noise Detection Routine Another important parameter that is critical to network and DAS performance on 3G and 4G systems is the effect of uplink noise. If even one Remote Unit or user on a DAS system is causing noise on the uplink RF path, it can bring down the performance of the entire system. Even worse, if the system is a donor-based solution, it can cause problems to the outdoor macro network as well. Most DAS solutions have no good way to determine if a Remote Unit is causing uplink noise on the system, which means there are many situations in which it is difficult to troubleshoot or even assess that noise is being encountered. There have been situations where this has delayed the turn-up of a large DAS solution by hours and even days. Also, uplink noise on an existing DAS at a venue could ruin performance at critical moments when response time is paramount. Forcing Verizon Wireless customers to go without service because our engineers had to test a DAS remote-by-remote with a signal generator and spectrum analyzer would be disastrous. The ADX DAS offers an ideal solution to quickly find uplink noise in the system by simply pressing a button in the Web-GUI. The automated Uplink Noise Detection Routine (NDR) will automatically go through each Remote Unit on the system and perform a noise detection measurement to isolate exactly where the noise is coming from. This allows the Verizon Wireless engineer or installer to quickly assess the problem Remote Unit and make appropriate corrections, which is even more valuable in the case of a time-critical event or public venue deployment. In the case of HP Windward, we were able to run the NDR during installation to ensure that no Remote Units were causing noise before the site even came on air. This protected the macro donor site from any chance of interference whatsoever. The NDR is a critical feature that makes the ADX stand apart from all other DAS platforms. Figure II. Module-by-module visibility via Noise Detection Routine 6 P age

7 Miscellaneous In addition, other features that ADRF built into the ADX platform proved extremely helpful to us and contributed to our decision to use the ADX on this HP Windward project, including: Requirement of only a single strand of single mode fiber to each remote allowed us to save up to 50% of time and cost in splicing and testing fiber cabling Option of choosing either a simplex or duplex input into the DAS future-proofs our investment by allowing us to change our signal source to a BTS in the future without any change in DAS Head End gear Having a GUI port at each Remote Unit to troubleshoot for two separate areas while in one location when commissioning/troubleshooting will save us significant time and manpower because we will not need Verizon Wireless personnel at both the Head End and Remote Unit simultaneously User-friendly DAS architecture and intuitive design the simple, logical configuration of the ADX made it much faster and easier for us to plug and play compared to other DAS platforms Ability to back-up and selectively restore settings for an already-optimized system will make any future potential troubleshooting faster and easier System Information section allows the user to generate a snapshot of the whole system Figure V. Simplex and duplex inputs on DAS Head End (ADX-H-RFU) 7 P age

8 Conclusion In conclusion, Verizon Wireless is proud to have chosen ADRF as the DAS OEM vendor for HP Windward. The overall deployment, including timely installation and commissioning, went smoothly and resulted in a very satisfied customer in Hewlett Packard (HP). With the ADRF DAS system currently performing to the highest standards of Verizon Wireless, the ADX has become an approved DAS platform in the Georgia/Alabama region. 8 P age

9 Authors About Verizon Wireless Verizon Wireless is an innovative wireless communications company that connects people and businesses with the most advanced wireless technology and service available. Our company launched the nation s first 3G wireless broadband network. We were also the first tier-one wireless provider in the nation to build and operate a 4G LTE network. With 4G LTE, our customers can access the Internet and stream media faster than ever and experience their mobile world in real-time. As the nation s largest wireless company, we serve 98.2 million retail connections and operate more than 1,900 retail locations in the United States. Globally, we offer voice and data services in more than 200 destinations. Founded in 2000 as a joint venture of Verizon Wireless Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ) and Vodafone (NASDAQ, LSE: VOD), Verizon Wireless is headquartered in Basking Ridge, N.J. About Advanced RF Technologies Advanced RF Technologies, Inc. ( ADRF ) is an established, leading provider of in-building equipment and services that improve wireless coverage and capacity for the largest service providers and enterprise customers around the world. ADRF s product suite encompasses active systems, including RF repeaters, distributed antenna systems, small cells, antennas, and passive components. ADRF offers complete, custom-designed turnkey solutions for wireless carriers, enterprise and public safety entities. We leverage our substantial wireless industry experience and in-building expertise to give our customers a seamless experience. For more information, please visit 9 P age