While attending the recent Saints vs Packers NFL Game in New Orleans, anyone curious about new cellular technology could feast their eyes on the massive amount of equipment lining the facilities. While capturing pictures to examine later, articles like the one below can certainly serve as a text book for the inquisitive patron. This certainly answers any questions about how up to 70,000 fans could use their mobile devices all at once.
DAS (Distributed Antenna System) seems to be the perfect solution to providing state of the art capacity solutions to massive amounts of devices in a relatively small or isolated point of congestion. Upon further investigation, one can find that there are 950 remote antennas and 70 miles of cable at the New Orleans Mercedes-Benz Superdome & Arena. The system was engineered to serve fans inside the Superdome and others in the surrounding facilities – which this fan can verify does with efficiency.
The longer we are in the telecommunications business, the more we tune into the water tanks with antennas as we drive by them or the capacity of a tower near our office…and now DAS is becoming more and more prevalent around us. The next time you attend a massive sporting event at a dome, park or raceway, look around and see if you find any interesting equipment.
Note: The Saints won 44 to 23 (WHO DAT?!)
Click here to read more about the DAS deployment in the Superdome: http://msbenbow.com/projects/telecommunications/das-superdome-arena/
Get more technical info on DAS here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_antenna_system
– Craig Taylor, Project Manager at Faulk & Foster