Distributed Antenna Systems

For 2017, the number of smartphone users in the United States is estimated to reach 222.9 million (66%), with the number of smartphone users worldwide forecast to exceed 2 billion users by that time.

Advances in telecommunication technology have been significant in recent years. These advances have meant that the population has a level of connectedness never seen before. The number of smartphone users in the US has been rising steadily for many years now and forecasts estimate that smartphone penetration in North America will continue to rise steadily into the future. The United States is one of the leading countries in the world with respect to adoption of smartphone technology.

With the explosion of these devices there is just not enough cellular bandwidth to go around! In particular, areas where there is a concentration of people the problem becomes exacerbated. Places like office building, college campuses, sporting venues and large cities create major challenges for cellular companies and their customers that are texting, browsing, Facebooking, etc…

The solution to these problems are distributed antenna systems. A distributed antenna system, or DAS, is a network of spatially separated antenna nodes connected to a common source via a transport medium such as fiber optics that provides wireless service within a geographic area or structure. A distributed antenna system may be deployed indoors (an iDAS) or outdoors (an oDAS).

In the last 2 years TP Electric & Power has been installing and commissioning iDAS and oDAS systems. We have technicians that are highly trained and certified in the areas of DAS installation and commissioning, fiber and RF cable installations, PIM and Sweep testing and all other areas required for a complete and successful iDAS or oDAS installation. We have installed these systems in local indoor sporting venues like the UPMC Mario Lemieux Sports Complex (20 antennas)and outdoor stadiums such as the Milan Puskar Stadium (40 antennas) in Morgantown, WV. We have also installed well over 100 nodes in cities, college campuses and towns in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.